Aaron Paul Eyes ‘Exodus,’ The Moses Biopic Starring Christian Bale

Aaron Paul has entered into negotiations to join the cast of Exodus, a new dramatization of the Moses story from the Bible’s Old Testament, according to a Tuesday report from Variety.

The website noted that the Breaking Bad star has yet to ink a deal, unlike cast members Christian Bale, Sigourney Weaver, and John Turturro, but it could be happening any day now.

Ridley Scott will direct the film, which finds Bale in the lead role.

If the Aaron Paul negotiations go well, the young actor will take on the role of Joshua, Moses’ successor, who — SPOILER ALERT — ultimately leads the nation of Israel into the Promised Land.

The film assumes Ramses as the Egyptian leader at the time of the great Exodus spoken of in the Bible. Joel Edgerton has agreed to play that role.

Edgerton usually doesn’t find himself playing the heavy, but he did a fine job as Tom in The Great Gatsby, so he should be more than capable of making the Israelites’ lives miserable.

There to guide him — and we have no idea how nasty (or not nasty) they will be — are his parents, played by Turturro and Weaver.

The story of the biblical Moses actually spans more than just the book of Exodus, with narrative spilling over into the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

By Old Testament accounts, Moses was born an Israelite but raised as Egyptian after his mother sent him off in a basket to avoid Egyptian authorities, which had, in the story, called for the drowning of all firstborn Israelite children.

He was taken in by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised by the woman, who employed Moses’ true mother as nurse.

He would grow to be a great, though, at first, reluctant leader of the Israelite people, and would eventually orchestrate their escape from Egyptian slavery.

The Exodus story encompasses both the parting of the Red Sea and the issuance of the Ten Commandments, two of the most famous events in Jewish and Christian lore.

It’s been filmed many times before, with one of the last being the animated effort Prince of Egypt:

Aaron Paul rose to fame as Jesse Pinkman on the hit AMC series Breaking Bad. He has two films in post-production: A Long Way Down, coming later this year, and Need for Speed, which will hit theaters in 2014.

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