The Flood: End of Mankind (Image: RIVERRAIN PRODUCTIONS)
Back in 2014, Darren Aronofsky directed Noah, a Hollywood blockbuster loosely based on the Book of Genesis’ account of the prophet building an ark before a literal flood of God’s divine judgment. Upon its release 12 years ago, the star and writer-director of the upcoming The Flood: End of Mankind admitted couldn’t stand what they saw.
Filmmaker Tim Chey recalled it being “very anti-biblical with rock monsters and Mother Earth”. When asked to compare their 2027 adaptation, new Noah actor Kevin Sorbo replied, “The biggest difference from the Russell Crowe movie is that I don’t play an alcoholic schizophrenic.”
Chey, who directed the official documentary on the global reaction to The Passion of the Christ, aims to make a biblically accurate version of the story of Noah’s Ark with his disaster epic. Speaking exclusively with the Daily Express, the Christian filmmaker shared: “It’s taken us 10 years just to write the script and have it vetted by pastors. We start the film three days before the flood. We didn’t want to focus on the building of the ark, but more on those three days and then the result and consequences of the flood itself and people being locked out of the Ark.”
Making no bones about it, he added: “We believe in the literal interpretations that Jesus is coming back and that it’s going to be similar, but it won’t be water; it’ll be fire. And so we’re very excited about this film. It’s very exciting.”
Noah and his family gathering two of every animal (Image: RIVERRAIN PRODUCTIONS)
When casting Noah, there was only one man Chey would work with, with the director exclaiming, “If he wasn’t available, we wouldn’t have done this movie.”
Sorbo, who has acted in Chey’s previous films, recalled: “He called me up and I said, ‘You better have a good makeup artist. I can’t grow a beard that fast.’ And he said, ‘No, no, I don’t want you to wear a beard.’ I said, ‘Really?’ He goes, ‘They do a beard in every Noah movie, let’s not worry about it.’ And I said, “I’m fine with that. He was only 600 years old when he built the ark. He lived to be 950!”
The 67-year-old star of God’s Not Dead continued: “Tim wanted to show people the urgency that Noah had to ‘Please, please get on the ark, I beg of you.’ People just laughed. They thought he was a nut job. Let’s face it. I don’t think Noah was a madman. I think that he was a good man. Period. And he just blew off all the negativity. People are yelling at him and saying he’s a moron, an idiot, and a nutcase. In one scene, a guy says, ‘Noah, why would God kill me? I’m a good man.’ He doesn’t believe in God to start with. He says, ‘I’m a good person’. My Noah replies, ‘Being a good person isn’t good enough, you have to be a righteous man’, and I thought that’s a good line.” Yet to quote Christ in the gospels, “Who is righteous but God alone?”
The Flood’s characters mirror people’s real-life reactions to the claim of Jesus Christ’s Second Coming on Judgement Day. Chey shared: “Noah has to warn people. We have a blacksmith, and he’s sort of lukewarm, maybe on the fence about God and the Ark, Noah and salvation. We have the naysayers and the atheists, and they’re overt, and they’re the ones who are kept out of the Ark, unfortunately.” But is this film really going to appeal beyond a faith-based audience?
The writer-director certainly thinks so: “People are curious about the end of the world as depicted in disaster movies. A lot of people will want to see this film because they want to know, first off, why we believe that there was an end of the world then. And secondly, is Christ going to come back and is there going to be another end of the world situation when Jesus returns? And my answer is, yes.
“As a former atheist myself, I would watch this movie simply because I’m curious. Why do my Christian friends believe in this stuff? They actually believe that God killed millions of people in the flood? Well, that’s very interesting. I would go see it, just for that. What is their theology? And why did they believe another end of the world is coming? Well, you have to be as blind as a bat. The Doomsday Clock is almost at a minute to Midnight, according to scientists who are not Christians. We’re at the very end, I believe, of mankind.”
Kevin Sorbo stars as Noah (Image: AARON PEREZ/BAUER-GRIFFIN)
The ever-confident Chey said of his new film: “It looks like a $50 to $60 million movie and I have never been more proud of the epicness. The visual effects are amazing, incredible, jaw-dropping. The animals look majestic. And we are just the most ecstatic people in the world about the look of the film. This can rival Ben-Hur, this can rival Avengers Endgame, this can rival the best of the best. I believe The Flood can rival even a Christopher Nolan movie. I believe, with all my heart, that it can rival any superhero movie. And that’s why we’re very proud of The Flood.”
The Flood: End of Mankind hits US theatres on March 5, 2027 and a UK release date is TBC.
