Warner Bros first began pursuing Spielberg for the project back in September, then in November, an unconfirmed rumor suggested that the director was in talks to helm.  Now it looks that may have been an instance in which a rumor turned out to be true, as discussions between director and studio are apparently nearing an end, with negotiations likely to conclude by the end of this month.  The studio is hoping to get production underway by March or April of 2013.

That might be too hopeful a tentative start time, as Spielberg is characteristically busy.  Right now, he's working on Lincoln, his Civil War tale starring Daniel Day Lewis as the sixteenth President of the United States.  Once he finishes up that partial adaptation of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Cabinet of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, he'll move directly into the science fiction epic Robopocalypse, an action film based on the novel by Daniel H. Wilson.  Still, Spielberg works insanely fast, so a spring 2013 start might just happen.

The tentatively-titled Gods and Kings is a screenplay by Stuart Hazeldine and Michael Green.  This take will inevitably be compared to Cecil B. DeMille's massive The Ten Commandments, which rather improbably starred Charlton Heston as Moses.  That huge 220-minute tale was a monster success in 1956 and has remained pretty firmly lodged in the cultural consciousness.

Gods and Kings would apparently feature a very different tone and style than The Ten Commandments, though.  An anonymous insider says this film is meant to follow Moses' whole life, from baby Moses "coming down the river, being adopted, leaving his home, forming an army, and getting the Ten Commandments.”  But the idea is that it would be, “a movie like a Braveheart-ish version of the Moses story," with Spielberg bringing his unparalleled chops to large scale battles and action sequences.  ”There have been glossy versions of the Moses story but this would be a real warrior story,” sayeth the unnamed source.