EXCLUSIVE: We’re getting word about a series in the works from Sony Pictures Television‘s AFFIRM television and Revelations Entertainment which is centering around the Biblical Nazarene movement.
Created by John Christian Plummer, the untitled series is set six months after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The secret Nazarene movement to spread his radical teaching of love is growing. Two families, one Hebrew and one Roman, are each fraught with their own crises of faith, and are drawn together in a complex web of espionage. The series, I understand, is being pitched as one about those who put their lives on the line, against extraordinary adversity, in the face of occupation and oppression by the most powerful empire in history, to bring Christ’s teachings to life.
The early Jewish Christian sect was first mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles of the New Testament where Paul the Apostle is accused of being the group’s architect before the Roman procurator Antonius Felix at Caesarea Martima by Tertullus.
EPs on the Nazarenes series are Plummer, Marybeth Sprows for AFFIRM Television; Lori McCreary, Morgan Freeman and Gary Lucchesi for Revelations Entertainment. Sony Pictures Television is producing along with AFFIRM Television and Revelations Entertainment.
Revelations was behind the hit series Madam Secretary as well as films like the award-winning Invictus and 5 Flights Up. Accolades include an Emmy nomination for The Story of God, three Emmy noms for Through the Wormhole, a Peabody Award for the ESPN 30 for 30 episode “The 16th Man,” and an Academy Award nomination for Freeman in the film Invictus. Freeman won a best supporting Oscar for Unforgiven.
Plummer is repped by The Cartel. Freeman and McCreary are repped by CAA and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern. Plummer was a co-EP on such series as Join or Die With Craig Ferguson and I’m With Busey.
Sony Pictures TV did not return request for comment.