1st look at Russell Crowe in Darren Aronofsky's 'Noah'

Now's a really good time to be following both Russell Crowe and Darren Aronofsky on Twitter. They're always fun to keep tabs on, anyway, but during the production of Noah, they've both been rather chatty. We'll get to more on that in a sec, but the big news today comes courtesy of USA Today, who have revealed the first photo of Crowe as the titular Ark builder, looking like he could really use a shave and a haircut, two bits. If God really wanted to save humanity, perhaps providing a Norelco™ would have been a better solution than raging waters.

The big budget Biblical epic is still roughly two years away from release, and while filming is going on in Iceland, Aronofsky has been tweeting away practically every step. Lately he's been talking about a character he calls Og, who as our friends at Patheos(where my colleague Rebecca Cusey sets up shop) reveal is part of a race of giants known as the Rephaim. Og is the king of Bashan, said to have lived during the time of Noah up until he was killed by Moses in the battle of Edrei. It's also suggested that Og had a special compartment built into the Ark just for him, and that he sat astride the vessel and saved it from shipwreck by steering it with his massive feet.

When Kevin Durand joined the film awhile back, he was presumed to be playing a giant who aided in the Ark's construction, so perhaps this is his role?  Noah is still a long ways off, not hitting theaters until March 28th 2014.