Without having watched the trailer, I must say that I'm on the fence about this.
I'm not generally against what is usually classified as "remakes". There's some pretty spectacular remakes out there, like for example John Carpenter's The Thing, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1978. And Ben Hur is a movie adaptation with I don't know how many iterations. So why not another one?
The main point is that you have to bring something new and exciting to the table, be it an entirely new spin on the source material, a wildly different direction style, a new commentary on society,... Just literally "re-making" an iconic movie with better technology and nothing else, on the other hand, is bad, bad, bad, bad.
darthspudius: Ben Hur is untouchable. They can remake it all they want but nothing will ever beat the original.
It pains me to say that I have never seen Sidney Olcotts 12-minute epic from 1907...is it really the definitive Ben Hur adaptation?