Studio claims no meeting was scheduled between the Pope and the star and director of biblical blockbuster Noah.
Paramount Pictures has issued a denial that Pope Francis
cancelled a planned audience with the film-makers behind its $130m epic
Noah. “A meeting was never scheduled,” a studio spokesman told the Hollywood Reporter in response to a piece published in Variety alleging that concerns over negative publicity had led to the meeting being shelved.
Variety claims says the encounter was scheduled tentatively for 8:30am today morning (Wednesday) at the Vatican.
Paramount
had reportedly been hoping for an opportunity that might have helped
Noah gain vital traction with evangelical film-goers in the US. The
studio has been courting religious communities in the run-up to the
release of Aronofsky’s film, with executives at one point testing an alternate cut which opened with a montage of religious images and ended with a Christian rock song.
Crowe, who portrays the waterbound patriarch, has also reached out publicly to the pontiff in a series of tweets last month.
Variety reports the meeting ultimately did not happen because the
Vatican was concerned news of it might leak, causing a spectacle as
Crowe and Aronofsky, the director of Black Swan and The Wrestler,
arrived in Rome. The pair are due in the city this week for a press
junket and tonight’s (Tuesday’s) Italian premiere of Noah.
Noah
has been a controversial project since its inception, with Paramount
eager to shore up support in religious communities after early test
screenings suggested US evangelicals disliked “dark” scenes in which
Crowe’s Noah gets drunk and ponders taking extreme measures to wipe
mankind from the face of the Earth. Many also complained that the film
inaccurately represented the biblical story upon which it is based,
despite the fact that a scene in which Noah has one too many after
finding land does appear in the Bible.
Aronofsky said recently
that he had won a battle with executives to screen his own version of
Noah in cinemas after around half a dozen alternate cuts failed to find
traction with evangelical filmgoers.
As well as Crowe, Noah stars
Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Douglas Booth, Jennifer Connelly, Nick
Nolte, Ray Winstone and Frank Langella. The film opens in the US on 28
March, with UK cinemas to follow on 4 April.
