In their groups, they had to put together a movie pitch based on the biblical narrative of the life of Solomon.
All movie options were open to them. They were told to decide:
- style of movie (drama, animated, modern adaptation, etc)
- market (children, adults)
- theme of movie (tragedy, comedy, etc)
- characterization (what’s Solomon like?)
- what elements of Solomon’s life are included? what are excluded?
- filming location
- casting
They also had to justify their choices based on the text.
We had very good conversations. I believe to got them to more closely read the text. They began to debate whether Solomon was a hero or anti-hero. They had a number of clever adaptations. In one pitch, the group wanted to make the animated Pixar movie, “Sol,” starring Solomon as a rabbit who leads the forest. At the end of their presentation, I asked, “Why a rabbit?” They said, “We wanted to capture that 700 wives and 300 concubines, but figured in a kids movie we needed to be subtle.”
