As Superman is to superheroes, Steven Spielberg is to directors.  He's the biggest, the most immediately identifiable by the vast majority of moviegoers, and he's the first guy people think of when they hear the word "director."  It makes a certain kind of sense, then, that the biggest director around would be attracted to one of the biggest stories ever told.  According to Deadline, The Bearded One is nearing a deal with Warner Bros to direct Gods and Kings, a new take on the tale of Moses that frames the Old Testament figure principally as a warrior.

If you're looking to tell an epic tale, then look no further than the Old Testament story of Moses, from his being set afloat on the Nile River as a pup though his personal chats with Yahweh to the liberation of his people from their oppression in Egypt and possibly including a forty year trek through the desert. 

If you're doing a new take on Moses, it's going to have to stack up against The Ten Commandments, Cecil B. Demille's three hour and forty minute 1956 epic.  So who could possibly deliver an appropriately massive new version of Moses' story?  How about Steven Spielberg, who, according to an as yet unconfirmed rumor, is in talks to direct Gods and Kings.

Seventeenth Century poet John Milton aspired to write an epic poem, in English, which would rival the likes of the Aeneid and Odyssey.  To do this, he meticulously created a unique, humbling syntax to approximate reading the language of angels and god, dictating his poem well after he himself was completely blind.  Of course, what he probably had in mind was that, four hundred years down the line, someone would make a 3D action movie out of it.  So it is that Alex Proyas is developing Paradise Lost, and now Djimon Hounsou has joined a cast that so far includes Bradley Cooper and Benjamin Walker.