Qatar-based firm to produce $1bn film on Prophet Mohammed

DOHA (AFP) – Qatar-based company Alnoor Holding has said it will raise the budget for a planned movie series on the life of Prophet Mohammed to $1 billion dollars from the $1.5 million announced three years ago.

The biopics will be produced as a series of “seven films — instead of three films as per an earlier announcement — with a total budget of $1 billion,” Alnoor chairman Ahmed Al-Hashemi said in a statement received by AFP on Wednesday.

The company said “the team of experts has finished writing the scenario after overcoming numerous artistic and dramatic challenges.”

Alnoor announced in 2009 that it was seeking financing for the film series, to be produced by Barrie Osborne, a Hollywood veteran of more than 40 years whose credits include Lord of the Rings and The Matrix.

Mohammed himself will not appear in the films, out of respect for Islamic traditions forbidding images of the Prophet.

Prominent Qatar-based Sunni cleric Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, head of the Association of Muslim Scholars, will lead research on the film and serve as technical consultant on the project.

The company said the film will be in English and will be translated into several different languages “to correct the wrong image Western societies have of Islam.”

Earlier this year, a US-produced low-budget movie called Innocence of Muslims that mocking Prophet Mohammed triggered a wave of deadly anti-US violence around the Islamic world.

http://vanguardngr.com/2012/12/qatar-based-firm-to-produce-1bn-film-on-prophet-mohammed/

1b dollars on a movie just to clear the wrong image painted by the western, this must be a joke

Mohammed himself will not appear in the films, out of respect for Islamic traditions forbidding images of the Prophet.

Who go come dey inside the movie

Maxymilliano:

Mohammed himself will not appear in the films, out of respect for Islamic traditions forbidding images of the Prophet.
/

But seriously, how possible can a movie on the life and times of Mohammed be produced and the message well passed to targeted audience without a lead actor to drive the plot?

A documentary of some sort will have sufficed instead 'coz it's just like spending a fortune to the re-enactment of 'The Jesus Of Nazaret'h all over again without anybody to play the lead character 'Jesus'.

Mohammed is the message to be passed across and the movie will make more meaning to skeptics if there is a sorta character to represent but I guess the producer knows otherwise.

If I remember correctly there was a film about Mohammed in which the 'camera' was his character as in his POV. Can't remember the name of the film. This will probably be the same - the 'prophet' character does speak but we just never see him only what he sees.