The Jesus film, the classic evangelistic film that’s been translated into approximately 8 bazillion languages, is getting a facelift for the first time since its 1979 creation. The Jesus film is going anime.

The basic rationale appears to be that the film is starting to look pretty dated, but completely re-filming it would require re-translating it into all those languages, which would be a truly epic task. But by giving it an animated treatment, they can still use the film’s original dialogue translations, which haven’t aged as much as the visuals have.

They’ve put up a concept video on Youtube and are soliciting comments:

There’s a survey about the concept video you can take after watching it. Some good commentary on the project at the Bible Films Blog and at FilmChat. And there’s an overview of the Jesus film anime project from earlier this year over at Mission Network News.

What do you think? Is an animated version a good way to update the film without having to redo the entire thing from scratch?