The Bible in film Christ with a climactic resurrection scene in color. "King of Kings" was re-released in 1931 with a synchronized musical score. MGM's 1925 silent-era "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ", starring Ramon Novarro was the most expensive film of its time. It included two spectacular scenes: the sea galley battle with pirates and the famous chariot-race. Another "swords and sandals" epic of the 1920s was "Noah's Ark" which combined title cards with spoken dialogue. The major studios produced fewer epics during the 1940s due in part to wartime scarcity of resources. After the war, some of Hollywood's highest grossing films were
Ben-Hur (2016 film) the book, the 1925 silent film and the more famous 1959 film of same name. The rights to the latter film were sold to Ted Turner in the 1980s. MGM had just emerged from bankruptcy due to the global success of the twenty-third "James Bond" film, "Skyfall", and "", which both went to gross over $1 billion at the box office worldwide, including above $300 million in the United States and Canada, while Paramount were doing well at the time with the biblical tale "Noah". John Ridley ("12 Years a Slave") was hired to revise the script, with Sean Daniel,