John Boyega to star in The Book Of Eli prequel show
The original writer and directors are involved, though the show hasn't been picked up anywhere yet
Aux News Eli
The original creative team behind the 2010 post-apocalypse movie The Book Of Eli is getting back together, and they’ve come up with a hot new idea: The Book Of Eli, but this time… it’s a TV show. That’s according to Deadline, which says the series is still being shopped around to “select premium buyers” (ooh la la), but that original writer Gary Whitta is on board to write and original directors Albert and Allen Hughes (a.k.a. the Hughes Brothers) will executive produce.
The show, if it gets picked up somewhere, will star John Boyega as a young version of Eli, the character Denzel Washington played in the movie. To say pretty much anything about Eli or his book would constitute a spoiler, but the twists at the end of the movie are so heavily telegraphed that it seems kind of insulting to pretend we don’t know what they are 14 years after the movie came out, so let’s just lay it all out there: Eli is a wanderer who travels the post-apocalypse United States protecting a special book—the Bible—from a bad guy who wants to use it to control people. Also Eli is blind and the Bible is written in braille, effectively making it useless to anyone but him. Not bad twists, to be clear, but come on. He’s always wearing sunglasses, and how many other special books are there?
Deadline says that the TV show would take place 30 years before the events of the movie, which—in Eli canon—would set it either during or immediately after the nuclear war (or whatever) that destroyed the country. It seems likely, then, that this prequel series would be about how Eli gets his copy of this book (and maybe why there don’t seem to be any other copies of the Bible anywhere else in the wasteland, though that is sort of touched on in the original movie).
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Everyone in the movie wears sunglasses all the time because the ozone layer is compromised.
Bozo.
And somehow it’s always Oakley in pristine condition.
Lol, and there’s this thing where blind people often wear dark glasses because they often feel uncomfortable and don’t like being stared at. Also, they can experience more eye distress from the light than the rest of us do. And it’s kind of sexy, even if there’s no one else around.
The Book of Eli film was a C- postapocalyptic movie idea/script made by A-list talent, making it both utterly watchable but utterly disposable. None of the grounded reality of The Road or the campy imagination of the Mad Max movies. And its pesudo-Christianity (Eli thinks he was led to the book and to where he should take it by the voice of God, yet he murders a whole lot of people) was lazy and insulting. There’s not much in the IP that’s worth reusing. Hughes brothers are good filmmakers, Boyega is a really good actor, but this would be better served as a brand new idea, not a prequel to a bad idea. I mean, the guy who wrote the script (Witta) also wrote After Earth, which was what happens when a C- idea gets made by a C- director. He got removed from Rogue One, and that movie ended up good. So there you go. As long as he’s involved, this will be bad.
What a strange title to bring back. Not to spoil, but I had pegged the “twist” within the first couple scenes of the movie, but because none of the characters addressed what I had assumed was the case, I figured I was mistaken until it came back around at the end.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Book of Eli. I laughed incredibly hard throughout.I know that wasn’t exactly the point of it… but it was just so po-faced and self-important, yet also so silly and unconvincing, that I couldn’t help myself.That fact that I was there with two people who took it very seriously as well, and one other who (like me) kept creasing up as things got increasingly portentous/pretentious (yet also completely without substance) only made it even funnier.
Adapt Canticle for Leibowitz you cowards.
Adapt Canticle for Leibowitz you cowards. That star I gave you? It counts for a thousand.
Thanks. It still amazes me that the best Canticle for Leibowitz inspired thing I’ve seen is still the season 4 finale of Babylon 5.
I mean, it’s nothing like the book (it’s an episode of Babylon 5) but the fall of humanity in a future dark age, monks preserving history and knowledge for when it can be of use again, and humanity’s ascension in the end that is itself a new beginning.. the similarities are striking.
I reread Canticle for Leibowitz every couple of years and it is always incredible. (The sequel, St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, started by Walter Miller and completed after his death by Terry Bisson, is really good too.)Canticle’s sections, Fiat Homo, Fiat Lux and Fiat Voluntas Tua, (Let there be Man, Let there be Light and Thy Will Be Done) would each work as an 8 to 10 episode season. Incorporating the Bisson book would make it longer but I sure would not complain.Seriously – they did (or are doing) Foundation. And they tried Childhood’s End, which I think suffered from being, um, not an interesting novel except for that twist in the middle. But Man Who Fell to Earth has been done, twice. It’s not like people in the business don’t know that there are classic s-f novels. It is kind of baffling that no one’s grabbed Canticle up.
It’s a prequel that takes place before the fall of civilization. It is called “The e-book of Eli.”
Eli was NOT blind…..he could merely read Braille!
Why? The story is over.
who is this FOR? what is the point? is it just gonna be 3hrs of a blind man memorizing the bible? did we see the same shitty movie? if anything Eli is the villain in that movie. he spends the entire movie kicking the shit out of ppl in order to preserve a book responsible for millions of deaths
I was always curious which chapters of the Bible was in the Book of Eli. A complete version of The Holy Bible in braille is around 18 books and weighs about 24 lbs.
Sure. I’d really like to see them coming up with an explanation for how the bible turned him into Daredevil.
But then again. No. I probably don’t.
I totally agree. That’s what it whiffs of.
I think Gary Whitta is a lovely guy but the only decent thing he’s ever had his hands in was the first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead. The Book of Eli is basically Fallout and Fist of the North Star without a hint of a sense of humor and irony and it suuuucks.
Well excuse me , his tenure at PCGamer magazine was fantastic! (also I liked Rogue One)
If only there were a way to dispose of this dangerous book!I haven’t seen the film… no fire in the post-apocalypse?
“but the twists at the end of the movie are so heavily telegraphed”
Oh, bullllllllllllllshit.
“and how many other special books are there?”
The fact it’s a Bible isn’t a twist. It’s known VERY early on that he’s carrying a Bible. The fact that he’s carrying a Bible is THE reason Oldman’s character gives a shit about Eli.
Also, the movie is called The Book of Eli. If the fact that it’s a Bible is a twist to you, then you are DUMB and should not be allowed to breed.
Is he already going to be blind? Not that it matters, I guess, since Denzel Washington’s character is “Daredevil blind”, which is to say, “sighted”.Anyway, I liked the movie OK, although the idea that religious texts are somehow worth saving rubs me the wrong way.
This movie always bugged me. The Bible is 100% the least interesting option for “last book on earth that must be protected.”
John Boyega as a young version of Eli, the character Denzel Washington played in the movie That works for me about as well as Ryan Gosling playing a young version of James Garner in The Notebook I mean. We know what James Garner looked like when he was younger and we know what Denzel Washington looked like when he was younger.[Also — I really like Book of Eli but it’s silly as hell. I can’t see expanding on its few ideas and making a series out of it.]
It’s not that I thought Book of Eli was bad, they did miss what works of a Zatoichi film that can get away