Ridley Scott's 'Exodus: Gods And Kings' New Photos Revealed, Casting Of Christian Bale, Sigourney Weaver, And Aaron Paul Still Under Fire For Lack Of Diversity

Award winning director Ridley Scott is a very busy man these days with several films in the works. New photos from one of his latest projects, "Exodus: Gods and Kings," were released today along with an interview with Yahoo! Australia. In the interview, Scott defends his casting as diverse, but some film fans are not buying it.

According to Indiewire, "With Christian Bale as Moses, Joel Edgerton as Ramses II, Sigourney Weaver as Queen Tuya, and Aaron Paul as Joshua, there has been criticism about casting white Hollywood actors in non-white roles."

Furthermore, "The controversy comes down to a uniformly white cast in the front lines of Exodus: Gods and Kings, while black actors were cast (again, almost uniformly) as slaves or servants," explains We Got This Covered.

Recently however, Scott explained to Yahoo why he chose to make certain casting decisions:

"Egypt was - as it is now - a confluence of cultures, as a result of being a crossroads geographically between Africa, the Middle East and Europe. We cast major actors from different ethnicities to reflect this diversity of culture, from Iranians to Spaniards to Arabs. There are many different theories about the ethnicity of the Egyptian people, and we had a lot of discussions about how to best represent the culture."

But do film fans buy the director's reasoning?

One commenter, Angela, states, "he's Ridley Scott. I feel like he has enough pull in Hollywood that he could've cast people of color in at least a couple of the lead roles if he really wanted to." Another commenter, Michael, adds, "people don't want historical accuracy, they want actors other than white people to get an equal chance for roles. And yes, we do have Hollywood to blame."

While the newest photos don't provide any exact evidence of the true number of non-white actors in the film, diversity continues to be an issue in Hollywood casting of large scale films such as this one. Hopefully for Ridley Scott, the actual film will reveal a more diverse cast than is apparent at this time. "Exodus: Gods and Kings" is due out on Christmas this year.