Danny Puff

PARIS (Reuters) - Director Steven Spielberg will preside over the 2013 Cannes film festival jury in May, organizers said on Thursday, an A-list casting that adds Hollywood firepower to the high-brow international festival.

Spielberg, whose presidential drama "Lincoln" took home two Oscars at Sunday's Academy Awards, will succeed Italian director and actor Nanni Moretti, who helmed the jury for Cannes' 65th anniversary last year.

The 12-day festival, which takes place on the Cote d'Azur in the south of France, is a major showplace for new movies from around the world that attracts top and emerging screen writers, deal-makers and hundreds of film critics.

Spielberg's blockbuster film E.T. screened as a world premiere at Cannes in 1982, and festival President Gilles Jacob called the respected director a "regular" at the prestigious film festival.

"Since then I've often asked Steven to be Jury President but he's always been shooting a film," Jacob said. "So this year, when I was told 'E.T. phone home,' I understood and immediately replied 'At last!'"

Spielberg called the festival a "platform for extraordinary films to be discovered and introduced to the world."

The 66-year-old director's four-decade career has included such varied films as "Jaws," "Schindler's List," "The Color Purple" and "Jurassic Park."

Spielberg was passed over at Sunday's Oscars for Best Director for "Lincoln," the story of the president battling to abolish slavery and end the civil war, but the film provided actor Daniel Day-Lewis with his third Best Actor award.

"Lincoln," distributed by Disney, also won for production design.

The Cannes film festival runs from May 15 to 26.

(Reporting by Alexandria Sage; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Read More

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Clothing worn by Jennifer Lawrence in her Oscar-winning role as an outspoken young widow in "Silver Linings Playbook" beat expectations by taking in about $12,000 at auction.

The wool, full-length winter coat worn by Lawrence in the Oscar-nominated comedy topped all items, selling for $4,652 in the three-day online auction, Los Angeles auction house Nate D. Sanders said on Friday.

The memorabilia dealer had expected the items to fetch between $500 and $1,500 each following the 22-year-old's Best Actress win at the Academy Awards on Sunday.

Lawrence also won awards from the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild in January for her "Silver Linings Playbook" performance.

The custom-tailored white pants Lawrence wore during the film's climactic ballroom dance scene with co-star Bradley Cooper went for $3,493, and a package of a teal sports bra and blue long-sleeved shirt sold for $3,175.

A black tank top from Lawrence's wardrobe, but not worn in the film, fetched $624.

Movie studios often hand off costumes to auction houses, where even small outfits can bring in high prices from fans and collectors.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Xavier Briand)

Read More

SEFFNER, Florida (Reuters) - A Florida man was missing and feared dead on Friday after a large sinkhole suddenly engulfed the bedroom of his suburban Tampa home, police and fire officials said.

Jeff Bush, 36, was in his room sleeping and the other five members of the household were getting ready for bed on Thursday night when they heard a loud crash and Jeff screaming.

Jeff's brother, 35-year-old Jeremy Bush, jumped into the hole and furiously kept digging to find his brother.

"I feel in my heart he didn't make it," Jeremy told Tampa TV station WFTS. "There were six of us in the house; five got out."

Jeremy himself had to be rescued from the sinkhole by the first responder to the emergency call, Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. When Duvall entered Jeff Bush's bedroom, all he saw was a widening chasm but no sign of Jeff.

"The hole took the entire bedroom," said Duvall. "You could see the bedframe, the dresser, everything was sinking," he said.

Norman Wicker, 48, the father of Jeremy's fianc e who also lived in the house, ran to get a flashlight and shovel.

"It sounded like a car ran into the back of the house," Wicker said.

Authorities had not detected any signs of life after lowering listening devices and cameras into the hole and rescue efforts were suspended after the site was deemed too unsafe for emergency personnel to enter.

"There is a very large, very fluid mass underneath this house rendering the entire house and the entire lot dangerous and unsafe," Bill Bracken, the head of an engineering company assisting fire and rescue officials, told the news conference late on Friday.

"We are still trying to determine the extent and nature of what's down there so we can best determine how to approach it and how to extricate," Bracken said.

Several nearby homes were evacuated in case the 30-foot (9-meter) wide sinkhole got larger but officials said it only appeared to be getting deeper.

The Bush brothers worked together as landscapers, according to Leland Wicker, 48, one of the other residents of the house.

The risk of sinkholes is common in Florida due to the state's porous geological bedrock, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. As rainwater filters down into the ground, it dissolves the rock causing erosion that can lead to underground caverns, which cause sinkholes when they collapse.

Florida suffered one of its worst sinkhole accidents in 1994 when a 15-story-deep chasm opened up east of Tampa at a phosphate mine. It created a hole 185 feet deep and as much as 160 feet wide. Locals dubbed it Disney World's newest attraction - 'Journey to the Center of the Earth.'

In 1981 in Winter Park near Orlando, a sinkhole was measured as 320 feet wide and 90 feet deep, swallowing a two-story house, part of a Porsche dealership, and an Olympic-size swimming pool. The site is now an artificial lake in the city.

"Mortgage companies are more and more requiring Florida home buyers to have sinkhole coverage on their homeowners insurance policy," said K.C. Williams, a Tampa sinkhole and property damage claims lawyer who lives 2 miles away from the damaged home.

(Additional reporting by David Adams and Tom Brown; Writing by Kevin Gray; Editing by Tom Brown and Lisa Shumaker)

Read More

NEW YORK (AP) Ryan Seacrest can tell you lot about the evolution of American Idol over the last twelve seasons, but the host is a bit more reluctant to discuss the evolution of his relationship with actress Julianne Hough.

When asked by The Associated Press if there was a wedding date in his future, Seacrest casually responded: "Are you getting married?"

Seacrest and Hough have been together since the spring of 2010.

After a few playful rounds of "Are you?" banter on the subject, he decided to call it a day.

Seacrest made the comments Friday while promoting "Idol Across America," a relay of the "American Idol" microphone across the country, taking a page from the Olympic torch relay.

As for the prospect of the microphone making it one piece, Seacrest says if not, "I'm sure there's one in a holster standing by if it breaks."

___

Online:

www.americanidol.com

Twitter:

Follow John Carucci at http://www.twitter.com/jcarucci

Read More

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) A disgruntled shareholder pressing Apple to create a new class of preferred stock has dropped a lawsuit that became a moot point after the iPhone and iPad maker changed the agenda at its annual meeting earlier this week.

Lawyers for hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital notified U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan in a letter sent Thursday that they no longer plan to pursue the lawsuit . Sullivan closed the case, which began three weeks ago in New York.

Einhorn had already achieved his goal last week when Sullivan issued a preliminary ruling blocking an Apple Inc. proposal that would have required shareholder approval before preferred stock could be issued. Apple withdrew the proposal from the agenda at its annual meeting held Wednesday.

Two shareholders who attended the annual meeting said they were disappointed that they weren't able to vote in favor of a proposal, which they described as an example of sound corporate governance.

Shareholders had reason to be even more discouraged Friday as Apple's stock touched a new 52-week low, deepening a roughly six-month slide that has wiped out nearly $260 billion of the company's market value.

In another setback Friday, a federal judge in San Jose erased nearly half of the $1 billion in damages that a jury had awarded Apple last year in a patent infringement case against rival smartphone and tablet computer maker Samsung Electronics Co. The ruling lowered Samsung's bill to $599 million.

Apple might be able to ease the pain of the recent 39 percent drop in its stock price by doling out some of its $137 billion cash hoard to shareholders instead of letting the money idle at a time when interest rates at near record lows.

Einhorn, whose fund owns 1.3 million Apple shares, filed his lawsuit to preserve Apple's ability to issue dividend-paying preferred stock without having to take the extra step of gaining shareholder approval. He is pushing Apple to issue preferred stock that would guarantee a 4 percent dividend.

Apple CEO Tim Cook dismissed Einhorn's lawsuit as a "silly sideshow" at an investment conference a few weeks ago and again Wednesday at the company's annual meeting. During a question-and-answer session with shareholders Wednesday, Cook said Apple's board is in "very, very active discussions" about what do with all its cash.

Apple, which is based in Cupertino, Calif., also has said it is considering whether to introduce another proposal that would require a shareholder vote on preferred stock. If another proposal is submitted, it probably wouldn't happen until Apple holds another annual meeting next year.

The company last year instituted a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share on its common stock in a move that returns about $10 billion annually to shareholders. Apple's cash stash has grown by about $39 billion during the past year as customers bought its products in record numbers.

Despite Apple's success, investors are worried that the company's growth will soon taper off as it contends with fiercer competition in the smartphone and tablet computer market. The company also hasn't introduced a breakthrough product since the October 2011 death of Steve Jobs, Apple's charismatic co-founder and Cook's predecessor as CEO. It's most recent creation, the iPad, came out three years ago, raising concerns that Apple's well of innovation has run dry.

Cook sought to reassure shareholders that Wednesday's annual meeting, telling them that Apple is working on some "great stuff," including some products outside its core line-up of iPods, iPhones, iPads and Mac computers.

That vague promise hasn't excited Wall Street.

Apple's slumping stock fell to a new 52-week low of $429.98 on Friday before rebounding slightly to close at $430.47, down $10.93, or 2.5 percent. The shares hit a record high of $705.07 in September when the iPhone 5 went on sale.

Read More

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - British actor Richard Burton finally received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next to that of his two-time wife, Elizabeth Taylor, on Friday, nearly 30 years after his death.

Welsh-born Burton, who died in 1984, received the career honor as part of the 50th anniversary of ancient Egypt movie drama "Cleopatra," in which he and co-star Taylor began their storied and tumultuous love affair.

The couple's adopted daughter, Maria Burton, accepted the honor of the iconic terrazzo and brass star along Hollywood Boulevard in the historical heart of the U.S. film industry.

Burton was nominated for an Oscar seven times between 1953 and 1978 but never won the prize.

Actor and fellow Welshman Michael Sheen spoke at the unveiling and recalled the awe he felt when Burton and Taylor, one of Hollywood's most famous couples, visited the village where Sheen grew up.

"The same beach that I built my boyhood sand castles (on) and learned to failingly swim - it was that same beach, that one legendary day, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor descended from the heavens, like gods from Olympus, in a helicopter ... and landed on those sands," Sheen said.

"They stepped out swathed in luxurious fur coats - it was the '70s - and walked among us for too short a time," he added.

Burton, whose star is the 2,941th installed, starred in 11 films with Taylor, including "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in 1966 and "The Taming of the Shrew" in 1967.

The couple's scandalous love affair during 1964's "Cleopatra" was made into a U.S. television movie "Liz & Dick," starring Lindsay Lohan, last year.

Burton and Taylor wed for the first time in 1964 and divorced in 1974. They remarried the following year, but that marriage lasted just nine months.

Burton, who was born Richard Jenkins, was married five times and died in 1984 from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 58. Taylor, who married eight times, died in 2011 at age 79.

(Reporting by Alan Devall; Writing by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Sandra Maler)

Read More

SEFFNER, Florida (Reuters) - A Florida man was missing and feared dead on Friday after a sinkhole suddenly opened up under the bedroom of his suburban Tampa home, police and fire officials said.

Rescuers responded to a 911 call late on Thursday after the family of Jeff Bush, 36, reported hearing a loud crash in the house and rushed to his bedroom.

"All they could see was a part of a mattress sticking out of the hole," said Hillsborough County Fire Rescue Chief Ron Rogers. "Essentially the floor of that room had opened up."

A sheriff's deputy rescued Bush's brother, Jeremy, who had jumped into the sinkhole to try to find him. Three other adults and a 2-year-old child were in the house at the time the sinkhole opened up.

"I feel in my heart he didn't make it," Jeremy Bush, 35, told Tampa TV station WFTS. "There were six of us in the house, five got out."

The entire household except Jeff Bush went out to eat ice cream on Thursday night and when they got home, Jeff was in his room sleeping. They were getting ready for bed when they heard a huge crash and Jeff screaming.

"It sounded like a car ran into the back of the house," said Norman Wicker, 48, the father of Jeremy's fianc e who also lived in the house.

Jeremy jumped into the hole as Wicker ran to the shed for a shovel and flashlight. When he returned, Wicker said he yelled for Jeremy to get out but the brother furiously kept digging until a deputy arrived and pulled him out.

Authorities had not detected any signs of life after lowering listening devices and cameras into the hole and rescue efforts were suspended after the site was deemed too unsafe for emergency personnel to enter.

The evacuation of several nearby homes was ordered due to concerns the sinkhole was growing.

The Bush brothers worked together as landscapers, according to Leland Wicker, 48, one of the other residents of the house.

Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said the sinkhole appeared to be as wide as 30 feet, 30-feet deep, and an estimated 100 feet wide down below.

"It started in the bedroom and it has been expanding outward and it's taking the house with it as it opens up," said Bill Bracken, the head of an engineering company assisting rescuers.

The risk of sinkholes is common in Florida due to the state's porous geological bedrock, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. As rainwater filters down into the ground, it dissolves the rock causing erosion that can lead to underground caverns, which cause sinkholes when they collapse.

Florida suffered one of its worst sinkhole accidents in 1994 when a 15-story-deep chasm opened up east of Tampa at a phosphate mine. It created a hole 185 feet deep and as much as 160 feet wide. Locals dubbed it Disney World's newest attraction - 'Journey to the Center of the Earth.'

In 1981 in Winter Park near Orlando, a sinkhole was measured as 320 feet wide and 90 feet deep, swallowing a two-story house, part of a Porsche dealership, and an Olympic-size swimming pool. The site is now an artificial lake in the city.

"Mortgage companies are more and more requiring Florida home buyers to have sinkhole coverage on their homeowners insurance policy," said K.C. Williams a Tampa sinkhole and property damage claims lawyer who lives 2 miles away from the damaged home.

(Additional reporting by David Adams and Tom Brown; Writing by Kevin Gray; Editing by Tom Brown, Marguerita Choy and Andrew Hay)

Read More

LOS ANGELES (AP) "Until hearing people walk a day in our shoes, they will never understand," says a guidance counselor at a high school for deaf students in "Switched at Birth."

Such insights are a staple of the ABC Family drama, a TV rarity that puts deaf characters, played by deaf or hard-of-hearing actors, at the center of the action.

But Monday's episode takes it a bold step further: Save for a few spoken words at the beginning and the end, it is silent. The actors' hands do the talking with American Sign Language, even rapping together in one gleeful sequence.

Subtitles, which are typically sprinkled throughout "Switched at Birth" episodes, keep the viewer clued in. But when a deaf character is confused because she can't hear something vital, the audience is too. It's powerfully disconcerting.

The cast, including Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin as the school counselor, are excited about what they see as a grand experiment and eager for viewer reaction.

"This is an opportunity for the hearing person to watch at home and try to experience it," said Katie Leclerc, who stars as deaf teenager Daphne Vasquez. "It's not exactly the same, but maybe you can try to imagine what your everyday life would be like."

"It's a risk," added Leclerc, who has an inner ear disorder, Meniere's disease, that can cause hearing loss and vertigo.

"A big risk," Matlin said through a sign language-interpreter. "But it's going to be an eye-opener. I'm very proud to be part of this risk-taking, history-making episode."

Matlin knows about making history. She was the first and remains the only deaf person to receive an Academy Award acting trophy, honored as best actress for 1986's "Children of a Lesser God."

The "Switched at Birth" episode pivots on another key moment for the deaf community: A 1988 student protest at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., that ended the unbroken succession of hearing presidents at the school for the deaf.

For fictional Carlton High School (inspired by real-life LA school, Marlton), more is at stake: The school faces closure because of funding cuts, which means its students will be "mainstreamed" with hearing teens.

(It mirrors a real-life trend caused by budget constraints, Leclerc said. There's also an increasing number of children being given cochlear implants to counter hearing loss, itself a controversial issue, according to series creator and executive producer Lizzy Weiss.)

The prospect is dreaded by the Carlton students, either because they've felt the sting of being an outsider or because they treasure being part of a deaf-oriented school.

"Deaf people feel that moving into the mainstream chips away at their community, which is about language and culture," said Jack Jason, Matlin's longtime interpreter and the series' on-set arbiter for correct sign-language use.

With Daphne as the driving force and invoking Gallaudet, students mobilize to take over the administration building and demand Carlton's survival. The conflict's ending will wait for the March 11 season finale.

The uprising panics parents and puts relationships at risk, including that of Daphne and Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano), the switched-at-birth characters of the title who have come together as teenagers from two very different households.

"We started in the pilot with just one scene that was pure ASL," involving Daphne and Emmett (Sean Berdy), said Weiss. As the series developed, she and her writing team began pondering the "what-if" of an all-sign language episode for the second season.

Then ABC Family approached her with the same idea, and the challenge was on to find a logical and engaging way to realize the ASL-only goal and a big enough story to make the most of it.

Last year, a "CSI: NY" episode took a stab at a nearly silent episode, using music by Green Day for most of its storytelling before reverting to dialogue in the final act.

The solution for "Switched at Birth" was to make sure every scene included a deaf character: "The truth is, when you're around people who are deaf, it's considered rude not to sign if you know how," Weiss said.

To avoid overloading viewers with subtitles the story was designed to be highly visual, including scenes of the student protest complete with picket signs and a defiant "Take Back Carlton" banner unfurled from the occupied school building.

Although some moments depict the pitfalls of being a deaf person in a hearing world, Weiss said, that's balanced by positive aspects.

"If you have been anything that's in the minority gay, Jewish, a woman, anything you have some piece of your identity that brings with it a lot of baggage and hardship, but also a lot of pride," Weiss said. "That's what we're trying to connect with."

The episode also highlights the beauty of ASL and its "coolness," such as being able to sign across a crowded theater and have an essentially private conversation, she said.

As with a silent movie last year's Oscar-winning "The Artist" the latest case in point "Switched at Birth" includes music intended to reflect the characters' internal lives. A viewer could add to the silence by muting it, but Weiss said that misses the point.

The episode "is not about silence, or 'absence of' sound. It's about language and culture and seeing the world from the point of view of a deaf person, and our perspective is that deaf people's inner lives are not silent," she said.

Matlin, whose counselor is a recurring character on "Switched at Birth," said the episode is an emotional and professional high point for her, one she would like to see exceeded.

"I never thought in my life I would see this happen. But I want to go further in terms of using deaf actors. ... I want (Steven) Spielberg to say, 'Hey, we want to use deaf actors.' Why not? And, hey, let's have the same respect for actors who are deaf as for those who are hearing.

"I don't know if we'll ever get there, but never say never," Matlin said.

___

Online:

http://www.abcfamily.go.com

___

Lynn Elber is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. She can be reached at lelber(at)ap.org and on Twitter (at)lynnelber.

Read More

NEW YORK (AP) Sean Hannity's cable television showdown this week with a Democratic congressman has become more than just a verbal schoolyard brawl. It's a fundraising opportunity.

Democratic and Republican advocates are using Tuesday's Fox News Channel appearance by Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison to raise money, even as the newly minted feud continues. Hannity said he planned to continue a discussion about Ellison's career on his show Friday.

Ellison opened his appearance on Tuesday's show by calling Hannity "the worst excuse for a journalist that I've ever seen," and their discussion descended from there. Hannity, who accused the congressman of "ranting," ended the gripping back-and-forth after eight minutes because "our audience deserves better."

The congressman appeared upset by a Hannity commentary just before his appearance that ridiculed President Barack Obama's speeches about fiscal negotiations.

Video clips of the confrontation spread online, and it swiftly became a partisan talking point. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin tweeted that Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, waged a "verbal jihad," or holy war, against Hannity. Martin Bashir, on his liberal MSNBC talk show, called the appearance "the utter evisceration of Sean Hannity on his own broadcast."

The lobbying group Progressive Change Campaign Committee sent out a solicitation to its supporters, urging them each to donate $3 to Ellison's campaign account or send him a thank you note. By Friday afternoon, the solicitation had raised $21,600, co-founder Adam Green said, with an additional $3,000 for a foundation supporting liberal congressional candidates.

Another liberal group, Democracy For America, also sent out an email to its supporters seeking donations in Ellison's name, spokesman T. Neil Sroka said.

"If you attack a hero of our movement, we're going to come back even stronger," Sroka said.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Republican Party posted a clip of the appearance on its website and asked for contributions. According to the website, nearly $47,000 of a fundraising goal of $50,000 had been pledged.

Hannity returned to the issue on his show Wednesday and Thursday, referring to an "epic meltdown" by the "incoherent congressman." A "Hannity" report Thursday explored Ellison's ties to polarizing personalities such as Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan.

"If I'm called a yellow journalist, immoral, a liar as a matter of fair play, I did a little research on him, and he's got some views and friendships that have not been fully vetted," Hannity said in an interview Friday. "He sparked it. He initiated it."

He denied that he was out for revenge.

"I follow my gut and instincts on what interests me," he said. "The fact that a congressman wants to start a fight with me, that's his business. I have the ability to fight back, and I will."

The spat could prove a welcome jolt of interest for Hannity when cable news ratings are sagging months since the presidential election. Hannity's average viewership of 1.9 million people in February was down 11 percent from February 2012, with a much sharper decline among youthful viewers, the Nielsen ratings company said.

Hannity said his ratings have been stabilizing. His Thursday night show, which featured Washington Post writer Bob Woodward, drew 2.5 million viewers.

Media critic Howard Kurtz, of The Daily Beast, said it was Ellison who had picked the fight and suggested he may have been trying to seek attention.

Ellison was unavailable for comment on Friday, his spokesman said.

"Representative Ellison was invited to appear on 'Hannity' to discuss the sequester, an issue that will harm thousands of his constituents and the American economy, and accepted the invitation for that reason," spokesman Jeremy Slevin said.

Read More

NEW YORK (AP) Mark Burnett was taken aback by the scale of what his wife, actress Roma Downey, had in mind when she suggested over tea one morning four years ago that they make a television miniseries based on the Bible.

"Momentarily, I think he thought I'd lost my mind," Downey recalled. "He went out on his bicycle and he prayed on it and he came back and said, 'You know what, I think it's a good idea. I think we should do it together.' We shook hands and haven't looked back."

The series debuts on History Sunday at 8 p.m. EST, the first of five two-hour chunks that will air each weekend. The finale airs on Easter Sunday.

Different stories in the Bible have been Hollywood fodder for years. Burnett, the prolific producer behind "Survivor" and "The Voice," said no one had tried to tie it all together and use modern computer graphics to bring images like Moses parting the Red Sea to life on screen.

Instead of being all-encompassing, they tried to concentrate on stories in depth and on characters who would emotionally engage the audience. The first episode illustrates the wisdom of that approach: it flounders at the start with a discussion about the world's creation but becomes more gripping when the emphasis turns to the lives of Abraham and Moses.

Burnett said he believes there's a growing "Biblical illiteracy" among young people.

"It's like saying you never heard of Macbeth or King Lear," he said. "In school, you have to know a certain amount of Shakespeare, but no Bible. So there's got to be a way to look at it from a pure literature point of view. If it wasn't for the Bible, arguably Shakespeare wouldn't have written those stories."

Downey, the former star of "Touched By an Angel," said she wanted to be part of something that would glorify God.

After pitching their idea to several networks, Burnett and Downey found a fit with Nancy Dubuc, History's president and general manager. She likes the challenge of ideas that seem unwieldy. History made the 2010 miniseries "America the Story of Us," which was a big hit, and 2012's "Mankind the Story of All of Us," which wasn't. Last spring's miniseries on the Hatfields and McCoys was an eye-opening success.

Burnett and Downey have been building anticipation for "The Bible" by previewing it at churches and for religious leaders. Rick Warren, Joel Osteen and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, have all endorsed the work.

"The faith community is going to sample it, unquestionably," Dubuc said. "Whether they stay or go remains with the TV gods. Our job has been to present this as an epic tale of adventure."

History's own campaign is not targeting a religious audience, emphasizing some of the dramatic scenes to suggest that audiences won't be preached to. The screening that Downey and Burnett have sweated the most was when their teenage children showed it to some friends.

"We knew that we could make it heartfelt," Downey said. "We knew we could make it faithful. But we wanted to be sure that we could make it cool."

Downey spent nearly half of 2012 in Morocco supervising filming, beginning in the cold of February and ending in the blistering heat of July. "We wanted it to be gritty and authentic," she said. "We didn't want it to look like somebody had just stepped out of the dry cleaners."

Her husband flew back and forth to the United States, where he would work on his other programs. Downey said she initially had no intention of appearing onscreen, but stepped in when they had trouble casting an actress for an older Mary, mother of Jesus.

Except for Downey, few of the actors involved are well known in the United States. Portuguese TV star Diogo Morgado portrays Jesus Christ, and many of the other lead actors are based in Britain.

The television airing of "The Bible" on History is only the beginning for this project. Lifetime will air a repeat each week after a new episode appears on History. It will air internationally, and a DVD package will go on sale this spring. The series' scripts are bound together into a book. Producers will make a theatrical release movie of a portion of the story, and are looking at showing it in stadiums this fall. Burnett and Downey have also reached a deal to make parts of the film available as part of a religious education curriculum for churches.

"More people will watch this than any of our other series combined over the next three decades," Burnett said.

Even better, their marriage survived the grueling process intact even stronger, Downey said.

"Nobody has taken on the broad vision from Genesis to Revelation, and I think we probably realized at midpoint why no one had done it before," she said. "It was maddeningly complicated and extraordinarily hard work. We approached it humbly, but we were exhilarated by it."

___

EDITOR'S NOTE David Bauder can be reached at dbauder(at)ap.org or on Twitter (at)dbauder.

Read More