a 74-piece symphony orchestra and a choir of 50 people. Ray Bradbury was brought in to construct a new ending as well as write narration in order to connect the disparate elements together. Bradbury wrote an ending in which the resurrected Jesus commissions the disciples to preach the Gospel. Then, he elevates as he walks towards the horizontal shores of Galilee leaving only his visible footprints to be covered with blowing dust. The disciples would also leave footprints in all four directions to be covered with dust. However, the ending was deemed too expensive to be filmed. Orson Welles was hired to provide the voice-over narration, which was recorded in London. Welles insisted on pronouncing the word 'apostles' with a hard 't', instead of the normally silent 't'. Following a sneak preview, the studio felt another scene between Siobhán McKenna and Carmen Sevilla was needed, which was shot in the MGM-British Studios near London on May 8, 1961. Release In June 1960, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had acquired the distribution rights to the film with their intention to distribute the film for a roadshow theatrical release as a follow-up to Ben-Hur (1959). Home media King of Kings was released to DVD by Warner Home Video on February 6, 2003, and Blu-ray by Warner Home Video on July 28, 2009, and on March 29, 2011, respectively as a Region 1 widescreen disc. It has since been available for online streaming and download through Amazon, Apple iTunes Store and Vudu. Reception Critical reaction Time wrote a negative review describing the film as "[i]ncontestably the corniest, phoniest, ickiest and most monstrously vulgar of all the big Bible stories Hollywood has told in the last decade". Bosley Crowther of The New York Times felt that the movie had "the nature of an illustrated lecture" and was a "peculiarly impersonal film that constructs a great deal of random action around Jesus and does very little to construct a living personality for Him." Variety praised the film as "a major motion picture by any standard" that not only "succeeds as spectacle" but also "succeeds in touching the heart." Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "It is not great art, nor is it the definitive photoplay about Jesus (will there ever be one?), but it is at least permeated by a soberness of purpose that, allowing for ordinary human fallibility, can be tacitly felt and respected. Technically,