AceShowbiz -

Brad Pitt could end up becoming the man who crucified Jesus Christ in his next film. The A-lister is eyeing the titular role in Warner Bros. Pictures' biblical film "Pontius Pilate", Deadline reports.

Pitt is not yet committed to the project at the moment, but he's expected to sign on soon. In the meantime, the fiance of Angelina Jolie already has a handful of projects on his list. He must wrap up Marc Foster's "World War Z", Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave" and Ridley Scott's "The Counselor".

The "Pontius" project was revealed back in the summer of 2012. Warners obtained a script about "one of the most vilified figures in history" written by "Woman on Top" scribe Vera Blasi. It was said that the script was presented in the vein of "Braveheart" and "Gladiator". It had the twists and unexpected turns that combine history, political maneuvering and storytelling inventions.

Instead of presenting a straight-ahead biblical story, Blasi's script described the titular figure as a "proud, capable Roman soldier" whose "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" to allow Jesus to be crucified.

Explaining how she created her version of Pilate story, Blasi once said, "You have the available facts from Roman and Jewish history books and the four gospels, and then you are left to speculate, to interpret the character of Pilate and give him a dilemma."

"He seemed a great way to offer context to this very famous event, and if you look at it from the perspective of the Roman governor of that time, it allows for an investigation of the politics of Judea at the time, and what it was like to be occupied by Rome."