From Ark To Titanic In Aronofsky’s Noah

Despite being critically acclaimed and having a reasonable amount of box-office success with movies such as Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler and Black Swan, director Darren Aronofsky isn’t what one would call a “commercial” filmmaker, and because of that he always had a somewhat artistic freedom to do as he pleases with his films, however in his upcoming film, the massively biblical and $130 million budget Noah, that freedom seems to be getting shorter and shorter.

Because this is such a massive film in comparison to what he usually does, Aronofsky and Paramount Pictures are having some troubles adjusting to each other’s sensibilities, especially over the final cut after some disappointing test screening.

Because of the source material, Noah will always be victim to some kind of scrutiny by the religious community, so in order to get ahead Paramount made three test screenings, each for specific religious and non-religious groups. The first one was for a largely Jewish audience in New York, the second was for a largely Christian audience in Arizona, and the last for a general audience in Orange County. Results were “troubling” according to THR who also says that Aronofsky has been unresponsive at Paramount’s requests for changes to be made to the film.

It seems reasonable that Paramount wants Noah to appeal to a wider audience, especially after putting at least $130 million in the project, let’s just hope that Aronofsky’s independent filmmaking way of being and the studio commercial way of acting don’t get in the way of a good movie.   

It’s unclear if Aronofsky got any rights anout the final cut, but Paramount vice chairman Rob Moore seems optimistic about the final result:

“[Aronofsky] definitely wants some level of independence, [but] he also wants a hit movie.  We’re getting to a very good place, and we’re getting there with Darren.”

Noah stars Russell Crowe, Emma Watson, Douglas Booth, Logan Lerman, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, Kevin Durand, Mark Margolis and Ray Winstone and opens on March 28^th, 2014.

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