Networks Seek Ratings Heaven : ABC is the latest to acquire a movie about Jesus’ life. ‘The Miracle Maker’ uses stop-action and 3-D animation.

Millennium Fever is hitting the broadcast networks hard: The list of movies about the life of Jesus coming to television this season just got longer by one, as ABC joined the fray.

Jumping into an already snippy competition between NBC and CBS, ABC has acquired its own movie about Jesus, called “The Miracle Maker,” which will air Easter Sunday, April 23, in the “Wonderful World of Disney” 7 to 9 p.m. time slot.

“The Miracle Maker” will be the second up among the network movies about the man Christians believe was the Messiah. NBC’s two-hour movie “Mary and Jesus,” which focuses on Jesus’ mother but includes extensive scenes from Jesus’ life, airs in November. CBS’ four-hour miniseries on the life of Jesus, which was announced first, is scheduled for May.

The competing NBC and CBS projects have already made for some colorful back-and-forth between the rivals. Asked at a recent press conference whether NBC was copying CBS, NBC West Coast President Scott Sassa quipped, “Did [CBS President] Les [Moonves] tell you he invented the Bible?”

Though all three are indeed relatively faithful Bible-based tellings of a story that is familiar to many, ABC is hoping its movie will stand out for a couple reasons. “Of all the Jesus projects, this is the only one designed for a family audience,” said Jeff Bader, senior vice president, program planning and scheduling, for ABC. A key character in “The Miracle Maker” is an ill young girl who is cured by Jesus; much of the story is seen through her eyes.

There’s also the look of the film, which was four years in the making and cost about $4.5 million, said Amir Malin, president of Artisan Entertainment, which is distributing the film in the U.S. “The Miracle Maker” was produced in Russia and Wales, using an unusual combination of stop-action and 3-D animation and more traditional digitally animated drawings.

“The pitch sounds funny: ‘a Claymation life of Jesus,’ but we screened it here and it was spectacular,” Bader said. “We were mesmerized by the look of this piece.”

Even though the film is animated, ABC will have some star power to use in promoting the film. Among the character voices are Ralph Fiennes as Jesus, William Hurt as a character named Jairus, Miranda Richardson as Mary Magdalene and Julie Christie as Rachel.

When ABC picked up the movie, it knew about the CBS project but not the NBC one. “The combination of the millennium, which is a milestone in the Christian world,” and the Sunday time slot made the project appealing despite the competition, Bader said.

ABC has the option to air the movie during future seasons, and if it is successful the first time out, the network is hoping “The Miracle Maker” can become a perennial event. “We won’t know until we air it,” Bader said. “This is a very family-friendly version, but there are no talking animals.”

None of the three networks knows how much of an appetite viewers will have for the movies about Jesus. Instead, they are banking on the success of last season’s religious-themed miniseries, NBC’s “Noah’s Ark” and CBS’ “Joan of Arc.” “It’s definitely a gamble,” Bader said, “but we think ours has a better chance of working, just because it is so different.”

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ABC’s movie is an international co-production, from companies that include actor Mel Gibson’s Icon Entertainment International, which financed the picture.

Artisan is better known for its hit theatrical movie “The Blair Witch Project,” but it has a growing family home entertainment division that distributes fare from Hallmark Hall of Fame, among others.

The distributor, which will release the movie on home video at Christmastime 2000, snapped up the U.S. and Canada rights in February, despite the competition in Jesus movies, and struck a deal with ABC after shopping the film around to outlets that included cable’s Fox Family Channel.

Despite the run on movies about Jesus, “at the end of the day, whether it’s the story of Jesus or any other film with similar content, what will distinguish a product is quality, and this is one of the best animated features I have ever seen,” Artisan’s Malin said. “In a very cluttered environment . . . you have to have an ability to stand out, and I think this product does that.”

Jesus isn’t the only topic with competing network movies this season: Both ABC and NBC are planning movies about the singing group the Partridge Family, and NBC and CBS are putting together rock ‘n’ roll films.