The same writing team hired to make a graphic-novel style, adventurous take on Moby Dick for Timur Bekmambetov and Universal have sold a pitch to Fox that would see them re-telling the story of Moses in the style of Zack Snyder’s 300. Yep, Moses will soon be using the stone tablets bearing God’s laws to knock heads in at a theatre near you. The Bear Jew? Guy’s a pussy compared to this Moses.

Variety reports on the pre-preemptive pitch buy by Fox. It’s a real life-story tale, starting with “his near death as an infant to his adoption into the Egyptian royal family, his defiance of the Pharaoh and deliverance of the Hebrews from enslavement.” And with ‘defiance of the Pharaoh’ you should actually be thinking plagues — massive, gruesome, deadly plagues.

Adam Cooper and Bill Collage are the writers, and while this could be just a big update of The Ten Commandments with modern effects (i.e. a Roland Emmerich-worthy parting of the Red Sea in addition to the aforementioned plagues) the fact that they’re ’sprucing up’ Moby Dick combined with the liberal tossing around of 300 as a stylistic signifier for this version of Moses’ story says to me that this will in fact be much more than a simple update. (Or, shall we say, much different, since ‘much more’ implies a rise in quality.) And from a certain perspective this pitch makes all sorts of sense — warped, twisted, Rob Liefeld writing/illustrating the Bible sort of sense, but whatever. 300 just had buckets of blood. Moses will have a river of it!

Despite the fact that Moses was said to have lived to 120, why do I expect the majority of the film will focus around a younger, ruggedly attractive version of the character? Doddering old guys just don’t look good speed-ramped and covered with blood.