Why does Hollywood keep barring minorities from Biblical blockbusters?

Ridley Scott's Exodus is hardly alone. And it's long past time for change.

Exodus
(Image credit: (Kerry Brown | 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation))

Ridley Scott's Exodus has almost every ingredient necessary to make a holiday blockbuster: a timeless tale, killer cast, massive budget, pre-release media buzz, stunning special effects, and an impressive director. But if moviegoers look deeper, they'll notice one ingredient is painfully missing: melanin.

Scott's big-budget film takes place in North Africa thousands of years ago. In real life, everyone would have had dark skin. But the movie is populated by an almost completely Caucasian cast. Welsh-born Christian Bale stars as the Hebrew liberator, Moses. Australian Joel Edgerton plays Pharaoh, and American Sigourney Weaver was almost laughably cast as an African queen.

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Jonathan Merritt

Jonathan Merritt is author of the book Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words are Vanishing — and How We Can Revive Them and a contributing writer for The Atlantic.