In this week’s three part interview with Darren Aronofsky, the filmmaker shared some new details on his long in the works religious epic Noah. I’ve been getting e-mails all morning from /Film readers wanting to know more, so I thought I’d bring you a history of everything we know about the project.

The idea originated ten years ago, even before Pi, when Aronofsky saw a museum exhibit. But the director’s fascination with Noah’s Ark began when he was only 13-years-old. Aronofsky won a United Nations poetry competition at his Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn school. The poem was about the end of the world as seen through the eyes of Noah. When Brad Pitt abruptly left The Fountain just weeks before principal photography, Aronofsky took some time off and began to develop a variety of different projects, one of them being the Noah screenplay. Aronofsky told The Guardian in April 2007:

“Noah was the first person to plant vineyards and drink wine and get drunk. It’s there in the Bible - it was one of the first things he did when he reached land. There was some real survivor’s guilt going on there. He’s a dark, complicated character. The tragedies we perform on each other are so well reported. Quite clearly, the planet is dying, and we are dying on it.”

And today we learned in the third part of our exclusive interview, that Darren wrote the screenplay with Fountain co-writer and college friend Ari Handel.

“We have an amazing screenplay,” Aronofsky told /Film. “It’s a great script and it’s HUGE. And we’re starting to feel out talent. And then we’ll probably try and set it up.”

Big and Huge are the words Aronofsky uses to describe the non-traditional English language biblical epic. But what gets me excited is Aronofsky’s passionate pitch:

“It’s the end of the world and it’s the second most famous ship after the Titanic. So I’m not sure why any studio won’t want to make it,” said Aronofsky. “I think it’s really timely because it’s about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what’s going on on this planet. So I think it’s got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist. He’s a really interesting character. Hopefully they’ll let me make it.”

Is anyone in Hollywood reading this? Someone needs to get this into development ASAP.

sources: /Film, Guardian, CHUD