An Amsterdam publishing house said Wednesday it would publish the Dutch filmmaker's biography of Jesus, "Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait" in September.

Verhoeven is best known as the director of blockbuster films including "Basic Instinct" and "RoboCop," but he is also a member of "Jesus Seminar," a group of scholars and authors that seeks to establish historical facts about Jesus.

Marianna Sterk of the publishing house J.M. Meulenhoff said the book included several ideas that ran contrary to Christian faith, including the suggestion that Jesus could be the son of a Roman soldier who raped Mary during a Jewish uprising against Roman rule in 4 B.C. Read more >

A video about the book (in Dutch) can be viewed here.


Verhoeven to film The Thomas Crown Affair 2

Paul Verhoeven told a Dutch radio program he will direct a sequel to John McTiernan’s "The Thomas Crown Affair", which itself is a remake of Norman Jewison’s 1968 version.

The Topkapi Affair (AKA The Thomas Crown Affair 2) should reach the cinema's somewhere in 2009.

All this is a bit of a surprise considering Verhoeven’s recent pledge to get out of Hollywood filmmaking. He was supposed to shoot another Dutch film ("Kneeling on a Bed of Violets") in 2007. Another project he was supposed to film, "The Beast of Bataan", is now being filmed by director Fred Schepisi and starring William Hurt.

Azazel (a project mentioned since 2002!) has been has been postponed once again, untill at least 2009, shooting earliest in 2008.