Brad Pitt is being lined up for the lead role in a new Hollywood film about the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, who oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, reports Deadline.

Studio Warner Bros is backing the big-budget project, which is based on a screenplay by Woman On Top author Vera Blasi. Her take, details of which first emerged in the summer, follows Pilate from his youth as the sensitive son of a Roman knight to the reluctant governorship of Judea, climaxing with his decision to order Christ's crucifixion. The screenplay, which Blasi claims to have researched for more than a decade, imagines the Roman prefect as an unfortunate figure caught amid antagonistic religious factions who is forced to make the fateful decision after finding himself in desperate need of popular goodwill. As well as Christ, it features the Roman emperors Caligula and Tiberius and New Testament figures such as John the Baptist, Salome and Mary Magdalene.

In a brief review of Blasi's screenplay, Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr writes: "Rather than a straight-ahead biblical film, Blasi's script reads almost like a biblical-era Twilight Zone episode in which a proud, capable Roman soldier gets in way over his head. [Pilate's] arrogance and inability to grasp the devoutness of the citizenry and its hatred for the Roman occupiers and their pagan gods leads him to make catastrophic decisions."

Biblical epics are currently flavour of the month in Hollywood, with movies based on the lives of Noah, Moses and battling brothers Cain and Abel (under the auspices of Darren Aronofsky, Steven Spielberg and Will Smith) all being mulled by executives. So far only Aronofsky's Noah, with Russell Crowe as the animal-hoarding antediluvian patriarch, has actually entered production.