You’d be forgiven for losing track of Paramount Pictures and MGM’s grand Ben-Hur reboot. Set for release long after Independence Day: Resurgence, Star Trek Beyond and Warner’s Suicide Squad, Timur Bekmambetov’s long-gestating reboot is all but set to cap off the summer blockbuster season next month, but there hasn’t been an awful lot of fanfare to trumpet its arrival.
Hoping to stoke excitement today is an all-new, minute-long trailer for Ben-Hur that chronicles Paramount’s modern redo of one of the greatest stories ever told. Taking point as the titular, disgraced prince and merchant, Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire) stages the comeback to end all comebacks in the snippet above, as he plots revenges on his adopted brother Messala (Toby Kebbell), who framed our title hero for a crime he didn’t commit.
In bringing back the 1959 historical epic – itself based on Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ – Paramount has cast Morgan Freeman, Rodrigo Santoro, Nazanin Boniadi, Ayelet Zorer, Sofia Black-D’Elia and Danish actor Pilou Asbæk as Judean emperor Pontius Pilate.
Ben-Hur is expected to race into theaters on August 19. Below, you’ll find a handful of new screenshots for Timur Bekmambetov’s biblical epic.
BEN-HUR is the epic story of Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston), a prince falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother Messala (Toby Kebbell), an officer in the Roman army. Stripped of his title, separated from his family and the woman he loves (Nazanin Boniadi), Judah is forced into slavery. After years at sea, Judah returns to his homeland to seek revenge, but finds redemption. Based on Lew Wallace’s timeless novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Also starring Morgan Freeman and Rodrigo Santoro.