The Matrix and Prophet Muhammad

From The Matrix to the Lord of the Rings to….a $150 million Hollywood biopic film about the Prophet Muhammad?

Yup, you read it correctly…

As reported recently by The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom, “[Academy Award-winning] producer Barrie Osborne cast Keanu Reeves as the messiah in The Matrix and helped defeat the dark lord Sauron in his record-breaking Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now the Oscar-winning American film-maker is set to embark on his most perilous quest to date: making a big-screen biopic of the prophet Muhammad.”

With a whopping estimated budget of around $150 million, the blockbuster film will chart Muhammad’s life and examine his teachings.

Mr. Osborne recently told Reuters that he envisions the movie as “an international epic production aimed at bridging cultures. The film will educate people about the true meaning of Islam.”

Oscar-winning Movie Producer Barrie Osborne of The Matrix and Lord of the Rings

Virtually next door to Dubai, the small gulf country of Qatar- the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas and home to The Doha Debates on BBC World News Television- aims to become a cultural hub in the region by signing the Muhammad biopic to its Al-Noor Media Holdings movie company.

Additionally, earlier this week, it held the first Tribeca Doha Film Festival attended by regional and international filmmakers, stars, agents and distributors.

I wonder if Robert De Niro was in attendance at the ‘Tribeca of the Gulf’ in the mini-Dubai-looking city of Doha.

According to MTV, in addition to the $150 million Muhammad biopic movie, Mr. Osborne is also already at work on Kingdom Come, a Biblical epic about the life of Jesus, which will be directed by Lord of the Rings visual effects artist Dean Wright.

As an Oscar winner for the 2003 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture of the Year for Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (an award that he shares with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh), the legendary American producer Barrie Osborne has already successfully made critically-acclaimed (and box-office) Hollywood movie hits dealing with ‘messianic’ central fictional characters in both The Matrix and Lord of the Rings.

For these reasons, it should then come as little surprise that Mr. Osborne’s fictional messianic trajectories within his past motion pictures would now motivate him to feature the actual lives of major sacred historical figures like Muhammad and Jesus in his upcoming movies.