FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO: ‘Ben-Hur’ Remake May Become Summer’s Biggest Box Office Bomb:

Paramount and MGM’s big-budget biblical-era epic “Ben-Hur” is expected to land in theaters this weekend with a Roman armor-plated thud.

Produced for a reported $100 million (which doesn’t count the presumed tens of millions of dollars spent on marketing), multiple trackers are currently setting its opening weekend gross at a paltry $12 million on average.

The studio has more faith, saying its estimates are closer to $20 million — still not great.

Timur Bekmambetov‘s remake of the 1959 hit starring Charlton Heston is the latest in a perplexingly large number of decades-old stories getting dusted off, repackaged and unleashed by Hollywood.

The “perplexingly” is a nice touch, as Fox Butterfield dons his Wayfarers and goes Full Hollywood.