Joel Edgerton goes head to head with Christian Bale in Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings

JOEL Edgerton takes on Christian Bale in his new role as Rhamses, the most powerful pharaoh in the Egyptian Empire in Ridley Scott’s new biblical drama.

JUDGING by the just-released trailer for Exodus: Gods and Kings, Joel Edgerton is relishing his new role as a Hollywood bad boy.

Better known, until recently, for playing working class heroes, the Blacktown boy has followed his against-type performance as The Great Gatsby’s aristocratic bully, Tom Buchanan, with a star turn as the pharaoh Rhamses.

Edgerton goes head to head with Christian Bale’s Moses in Ridley Scott’s

interpretation of the great biblical drama.

Head to head ... Christian Bale as Moses and Joel Edgerton as Rhamses.

According to advance reports, Exodus bears little resemblance to the version of the story delivered by Cecil B. DeMille and Charlton Heston almost 60 years ago in The Ten Commandments.

‘Very few people have actually read the Torah, the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, all the way through,” Bale told online site HitFix.

“It’s harsh. It’s really Old Testament. And violent in the extreme. He was not a man of any half measures whatsoever.”

In DeMille’s 1956 recreation of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, baldheaded Russian actor Yul Brynner was cast as Rhamses, the greatest and most powerful pharaoh in the Egyptian Empire.

Originally published as Joel Edgerton goes head to head with Christian Bale in Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings