Pawan Kalyan, shown Tuesday in Jerusalem, is to narrate a biopic of Jesus to be made by Bollywood director Singeetham Srinivasa Rao. (Sebastian Scheiner/Associated Press)

The life of Jesus, which has seen film adaptations by directors from Cecil B. DeMille to Mel Gibson, is now to get the Bollywood treatment.

South Indian director Singeetham Srinivasa Rao and producer Konda Krishnam Raju have announced they will make a $30-million US feature about the early life of Jesus of Nazareth.

The movie, announced Tuesday in Jerusalem, will be shot in Israel and the Palestinian Territories over the next few months.

Rao told a news conference that he hoped the film would spread "the message of love and peace" around the world.

The ambitious film has a large budget for a Bollywood effort and will be narrated in four languages — English and three Indian languages, Telugu, Hindi and Malayalam.

Actor Pawan Kalyan will narrate the Telugu and Malayalam versions, while other well known actors will narrate the English and Hindi versions.

It will feature an all-Indian cast of child actors — playing all the roles, including the adult ones. India's religious films have traditionally used child actors to highlight the innocence, sanctity and divinity of religious figures, the director said.

There also will be seven devotional songs in the film, scheduled for release next year.

There are 24 million Christians in India, or about 2.3 per cent of the country's population, but the film is also expected to get a warm reception among viewers of other faiths, the producers said.

American makeup artist Christien Tinsley, who worked on The Passion of the Christ, has been hired to work on the as-yet-unnamed Bollywood film. Gibson's Passion was criticized for its violence.

There have been numerous Hollywood depictions of Jesus's life, including the 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth directed by Franco Zeffirelli and DeMille's King of Kings.