A modern-day religious drama about the second coming of Christ is being developed for Netflix by veteran TV producer Mark Burnett and his actress-wife, Roma Downey, several top Hollywood trade publications are reporting.
"Messiah" will be written by Michael Petroni, who penned the screenplays for "The Book Thief," "Queen of the Damned" and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," according to The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and Deadline.
Burnett, producer of the smash reality shows "Survivor," "Shark Tank" and Donald Trump's "The Apprentice," and Downey, star of "Touched by an Angel," are no strangers to successful religious programming.
The husband-wife team executive produced the wildly-popular History Channel series "The Bible" in 2013, and its 2015 follow-up on NBC, "A.D. The Bible Continues."
They also were executive producers of "Answered Prayers," a TLC series featuring people who experienced divine intervention during life-threatening situations.
In a 2014 interview with Newsmax TV's Steve Malzberg, Burnett said Hollywood was experiencing a renaissance of religious programming thanks to its large, but mostly silent, community of devout Christians.
"I will tell you there's a lot of Christians who love Jesus, who love God in Hollywood. I've got news for everybody out there. Hey, the mass of Americans love family-friendly, love God," Burnett told Malzberg.
"Roma and I have become the very noisy Hollywood Christians, and we're very happy being in that position because it's our faith. This is a faith that millions of people have willingly died for, right? They could have saved themselves if they denied Jesus, but they didn't, and billions live for it."
"Messiah," to be filmed in Los Angeles, chronicles "the modern world's reaction to a man who first appears in the Middle East and seems to be performing miracles," The Hollywood Reporter says.
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