any idea why mgm would do back-to-back tales of the christ?
"the greatest story ever told" and "king of kings"?
shareMGM never did GSET. The film was George Stevens' pet project done with 20th Century Fox, who decided to cut all ties because of its skyrocketing budget (they were already dealing with CLEOPATRA), leading to Stevens getting the financial help from United Artists.
You are confusing the video rights. When Home Video came to be, 20th Century Fox gained the rights to release much of United Artists' film stock. If you do some research, you will notice that a lot of UA films (the James Bond series, the Pink Panther series, SOME LIKE IT HOT, WEST SIDE STORY) were marketed as CBS FoxVideo. Later, the UA films came under the property of MGM/UA, who marketed them to video under their banner. When Time Warner gained the rights to market much of MGM's films (which is why you see a lot of MGM films marketed on DVD as Warner Bros.), MGM was able to keep their UA properties until recently, which is now Fox property.
So, GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD was released by United Artists, was released on VHS by 20th Century Fox and later MGM/UA. Came to DVD by MGM/UA. Came to Blu-Ray by Fox.
oh, okay -- my DVR grabbed them both and i forgot about the separate rights issues.
thank you!!!
MGM did -- sort of -- do two back-to-back "tales of the Christ" -- only you have one of them wrong. You're forgetting Ben-Hur (1959), which is explicitly subtitled "A Tale of the Christ". Of course, it really isn't -- Christ is an incidental if key figure in the film -- but as a large-scale Biblical epic it qualifies, I think.
King of Kings was actually made by an independent producer, Samuel Bronston, who had his studios in Spain. MGM was merely the releasing company; it wasn't an MGM film as such, in the way Ben-Hur was, that is, a direct production of the studio itself.
Another link between those two films is that both had scores by Miklos Rosza, who specialized in epics and film noir. If you listen to his score for King of Kings, there are many passages that are extremely similar to his music for Ben-Hur. There are also obvious similarities in some of the sets and costumes. KOK was clearly influenced in its look and sound by B-H.
Ben-Hut did so well they decided to do another similar film. As always.
I'm watching it now. It's okay for the time it was made.