Leading film-makers are courting controversy with plans for adaptations of provocative books about Jesus Christ that are likely to generate a backlash from traditional Christians.

British producer David Heyman is developing a film based on Reza Aslan’s bestselling book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, while Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch director, has been working on an adaptation of his own book, Jesus of Nazareth, for five years.

Aslan, a member of the American Academy of Religion, made headlines last year when a Fox News interviewer challenged his credentials, as a Muslim, to write an account of Jesus’s life which portrayed him as one of a group of prominent Jewish rebels against the Roman Empire. Aslan’s book was condemned by an evangelical American author and pastor, John S Dickerson, as “a fast-paced demolition of the core beliefs that Christianity has taught about Jesus for 2,000 years”.

Verhoeven, whose films include Showgirls and Basic Instinct, is likely to cause further upset in screening his account of Christ, in which Jesus is understood not as a miracle-worker but as a persuasive advocate of a new ethics. Other Jesus dramas include a television mini-series, Killing Jesus, by British director Ridley Scott, who was showered with five Oscars for Gladiator, and Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, produced by Enzo Sisti, who worked on Mel Gibson’s controversial The Passion of the Christ, which had dialogue in Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew.

The Rev David Holloway, vicar of Jesmond, in Newcastle upon Tyne, said: “The depiction of Christ is always a problem. That is one of the issues which you have to be careful about because it then fixes ideas in people’s minds about Jesus, which is not a good thing.”

The Jesus productions are among a biblical flood of films inspired by the Old and New Testaments. We may live in a more secular age, but at least a dozen dramas on the epic scale which the Bible – or perhaps producers – seems to demand are in various stages of development. Some of the stories emerge directly from the Bible, others have biblical themes – parables for today’s troubled times. Whether they can all perform miracles at the box office remains to be seen. But audiences this year did flock to Noah, or to Russell Crowe as the ark builder. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, it has taken $320m worldwide.

Russell Crowe in Noah. Photograph: Allstar

Boxing Day sees the UK release of Scott’s epic Exodus: Gods and Kings, with Christian Bale as Moses. While the Observer called it a “half triumph”, Variety extolled it as “a work of massive, David Lean-like scale – with battle scenes that rival or eclipse Scott’s Gladiator”. The director is now planning another biblical drama – a big-budget film about David’s slaying of Goliath.

Warner Bros is also developing a King David project and a third version has cast Jerry Sokoloski, Canada’s tallest man – at 7ft 8in – as the giant. Director Tim Chey was apparently wary of creating a CGI imitation like The Incredible Hulk.

Other films include a version of the hit stage musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, confirmed last week that a script is now being prepared for a film by Elton John’s company, Rocket Pictures. Other productions feature some of Britain’s foremost actors. Joseph Fiennes will be seen in Clavius as a centurion ordered by Pontius Pilate to find the missing body of Jesus, and Ben Kingsley will appear as the tyrannical Herod in Mary Mother of Christ, a story of Mary and Joseph as young parents living in precarious times.

Jeffrey Caine, who wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Constant Gardener, was one of four writers on Scott’s Exodus. Asked about the popularity of biblical stories for film-makers, he said: “It’s largely because they’re terrific stories. They’re perennially popular, like the stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood. You know there’s always going to be an audience for them … Plus they make money.” More than half a century after Charlton Heston’s blockbuster Ben-Hur, Paramount is planning a remake, “focusing on the nature of faith”.

But religious films also risk the wrath of believers. Conservative Christians condemned Noah for promoting a message about climate change. Evangelicals were outraged by Martin Scorsese depicting Jesus as having sexual fantasies about Mary Magdalene in 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ.

Of the sheer number of productions, the vicar of Jesmond said: “That’s an interesting story in its own right … almost a reaction to the extreme secularism which we’re having.”