US$22 million Ben Hur saddles up

Filming has started on a Ben Hur miniseries that has been pre-bought by ABC in the US, CBC in Canada, Antena 3 in Spain and ProSieben in Germany.

The US$22 million, four-part, miniseries, based on the nineteenth century novel by Lew Wallace, is being filmed in Morocco and will deliver in December and start hitting TV screens from Easter 2010.

Alchemy Television has put together the financing for the project, which is being coproduced by Alchemy, Spain’s Drimtim Entertainment, Canada’s Muse Entertainment, Morocco’s Zak Productions and Germany’s Akkord Films.

The series will be directed by Steve Shill (The Tudors, Rome) from an Alan Sharp script (Rob Roy).