Hong Xiuquan, one of the most important and weird figures in world history. While China's wars usually had far more deaths than Europe's wars pre-WW1, the death toll from Hong Xiuquan's Taiping Rebellion is staggering. Between 20m and 100m dead in a conflict from 1850 to 1864 is a nearly unimaginable death toll for the time.
The basic narrative around the man is that he was a student attempting to take the civil service examinations. However, he failed repeatedly and had a nervous breakdown that lead to him believing that he was the brother of Jesus Christ. Regardless of why he started to believe (or stated that he believed) he was the brother of Jesus Christ, Hong Xiuquan grew into an aggressive anti-Buddhism and anti-Confucianism Christian preacher. He translated the Bible and claimed that Christianity was the true religion of China's past. He amassed some amount of followers and his followers turned into an army that took part in one of the bloodiest wars in human history.
It's a totally ludicrous, epic, and insane story that happens to be true... It seems like it would be very fertile ground for adaptation, but US studios have seemed somewhat uninterested in it I suppose as I can't find many or any adaptations of his history. Do we think someone is going to eventually touch this story for a big budget adaptation or no?
The basic narrative around the man is that he was a student attempting to take the civil service examinations. However, he failed repeatedly and had a nervous breakdown that lead to him believing that he was the brother of Jesus Christ. Regardless of why he started to believe (or stated that he believed) he was the brother of Jesus Christ, Hong Xiuquan grew into an aggressive anti-Buddhism and anti-Confucianism Christian preacher. He translated the Bible and claimed that Christianity was the true religion of China's past. He amassed some amount of followers and his followers turned into an army that took part in one of the bloodiest wars in human history.
It's a totally ludicrous, epic, and insane story that happens to be true... It seems like it would be very fertile ground for adaptation, but US studios have seemed somewhat uninterested in it I suppose as I can't find many or any adaptations of his history. Do we think someone is going to eventually touch this story for a big budget adaptation or no?