Whatever happened to the Gospel of Mark film?

Over on The Golden Rule, Mike Koke blogs on The Gospel of Mark - A Good Hollywood Script? and embeds the teaser trailer of Visual Bible International's proposed Gospel of Mark film:



I have often blogged about this in the past (see Gospel of Mark film) and from time to time I receive emails asking if I know any more about it. The teaser trailer first came out in March 2005 and as far as I can tell, filming never began on this project, as Visual Bible International fell into every greater financial problems. It is my impression that the teaser trailer was released to encourage interest in making the film, and that it was not released after any actual filming had been done. (The video does feature Henry Ian Cusick's eyes, but this and the other images were probably gleaned from the Gospel of John filming).

There does appear to be one new piece of information, though, among comments on the Youtube upload of the teaser trailer above, as follows:

I just received a reply to my email question from Philip Saville the director himself of the Gospel of John and He replied, I quote

" Many many thanks for your enquiry about The Gospel of Mark.
Regrettably we haven't as yet been able to put it together.
Sorry to disappoint........Maybe next year?
Meanwhile I wish you and all your youtube-rs well over Thanksgiving.

Stay well
Philip Saville "

This comment is dated to November 2009. It's interesting that Saville does not declare the project dead, and the reference to "put it together" is intriguing since that expression might be more appropriate to editing rather than filming. But he may, of course, simply mean put together the funding and so on. So it is not promising.

I agree with Mike that the Gospel of Mark would be fantastic for film treatment. It ought to be more amenable than Matthew, which was the Visual Bible's first film, or John, which was their second.