|
"Boardwalk Empire" actor Jack Huston takes on the role for
which the late Charlton Heston was named Best Actor, playing the
young Jewish noble Judah Ben-Hur, who is sent into slavery by
Roman occupiers but returns to take his revenge.
"If you think about the climate of the world today -- and this
movie is set 2,000 years ago -- you realize the world hasn't
changed that much," Huston said at the film's Tuesday premiere.
"Being a beautiful action movie with all of the thrills and
excitement, it's still a very serious movie for our time."
Producer Mark Burnett said that for the chariot-racing sequence
-- nine minutes long in the original -- special effects had been
used only for crash scenes.
"The actual horses were ridden and driven by the actors. It was
32 horses, eight chariots round and around that arena at full
speed, sometimes on one wheel," he said.
"When the horses have crashes, that's all special effects -- but
the rest of the racing is all the real horses with the actors."
"Ben-Hur" hits cinemas worldwide from Wednesday.
(Reporting By Reuters Television; Writing by Marie-Louise
Gumuchian; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
|
|
