Many were surprised when it was announced a couple of months ago that Nicolas Cage had signed up to star in a remake of the evangelical Christian based movies, Left Behind. Now One Tree Hill star Chad Michael Murray is in talks for the movie.
There is a little confusion, as in October it was suggested that Cage would play journalist Cameron “Buck” Williams, although now Deadline says Chad Michael Murray will play the reporter. There’s no indication that Cage has exited the production, so presumably he’ll be playing a different character.
The film, based on the novels by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye (which became a film series in the early 2000s), follows a group trying to survive in the aftermath of the Rapture, which has seen all the true Christians being spirited up to heaven, leaving everyone else behind to deal with the end of days. Paul Lalonde, who wrote the original Left Behind in 2001, and John Patus, who wrote the last installment of the earlier film series, Left Behind: World at War, are writing the screenplay.
Vic Armstrong is directing for Family Screen Pictures, with a budget set at $15 million. The original novels have sold over 65 million copies worldwide.