Screen Pilates: Hristov Shopov

Continuing our series on screen portrayals of Pilate that I began in 2011 during Holy Week.    The posts on portrayals of Pilate by Rod Steiger, Richard Boone, Barry Dennen, Hristov Shopov, Telly Savalas, Frank Thring, Stephen Russell, Greg Hicks, Cyril Richard, Stephen Moyer, Dennis King, Keith Mitchell, Leif Erickson, Peter Firth, David Bowie, Lowell Gilmore,  Hurd Hatfield, Vincent Regan, Arthur Kennedy, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Pilou Asbaek and Basil Rathbone may be viewed  here, here, here, here  here , here, here, here, here , here , here, here, here , here , here , here , here , here,  here , here , here ,  here and here.

Yes, that Hristov Shopov again.  The actor who portrayed Pilate in the 2004 blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, played Pilate again in the 2006 film The Final Inquiry.  The conceit of this film, a remake of the 1986 film The Inquiry, is that the Emperor Tiberius sent Tribune Tito Valerio Tauro to Judea to investigate the Crucifixion of Jesus, due to the eclipse of the sun that occurred during the Crucifixion  and that was seen throughout the Empire.  Shopov portrays Pilate as eager to keep from the Emperor the news that a new religion has been spawned as a result of the Crucifixion.    The portrayal of Pilate is fairly one dimensional as a rather impassive Roman bureaucrat who wants to avoid trouble from the Emperor, but The Final Inquiry is a much lesser film than The Passion of the Christ and Shropov’s screen time is quite limited.