Should there be a major movie or TV show about Hong Xiuquan?

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

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?

 

[CharlesAznable]

Holy shit that story sounds insane. Surprised I've never heard of him.

 

[Doggg]

That's some crazy shit.

 

[Murasaki]

How do you think the current Chinese regime is going to take a straight movie about the Taiping Rebellion? LMAO

 

[GungHo]

There have been historical fiction novels and movies around the Taiping Rebellion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion#In_popular_culture

However, it may be a difficult to get something "straight" (to use Murasaki's term) out of something like that in China, HK, or Taiwan wrt a Hong Xiuquan biopic, especially when the peanut gallery is going to make a bunch of comparisons between him and Li Hongzhi. That's going to make a lot of people real uncomfortable real quick.

 

[Titik]

It's probably because the current government in China doesn't want it to happen for various uncomfortable reasons.

 

[RedSwirl]

I wonder if Netflix would ever go through the trouble of producing Chinese-language stuff. Has it already?

 

[Timbuktu]

There have been historical fiction novels and movies around the Taiping Rebellion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion#In_popular_culture

However, it may be a difficult to get something "straight" (to use Murasaki's term) out of something like that in China, HK, or Taiwan wrt a Hong Xiuquan biopic, especially when the peanut gallery is going to make a bunch of comparisons between him and Li Hongzhi. That's going to make a lot of people real uncomfortable real quick.

Click to shrink...

The only movie off the top my head with Taiping Rebellion as a setting would be 投名狀 Warlords, by Hong Kong director Peter Chan, with Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro.

I'm not if this setting and this gritty kind of film would be possible in China today. The director is now doing patriotic sport movies about the volleyball team and Li Na.

 

[Slowsonic]

There is a historical drama made by Chinese Central television in 2000, here's a random episode I can find on youtube.

Hong is not a real Christian, he borrowed elements from the bible to start his own cult, during a time of famine.
It's very typical for Chiese peasants to start rebellion under the mask of a cult, which happened with the yellow turban lead to the 3 kingdoms era, which happened with the moni cult that buried the mongul's reign in China. and again in the boxer rebellion after Taiping. and among all the rebellions in Chinese history, Taiping rebellion isn't more 'dramatic' in faction and isn't that historical significant. the real significance is trough the crackdown of Taiping, power has transferred from Mogualian Manchu nobles to Han Chinese warlords, which plant the seed for the demise of the Manchu (Qing) empire.

 

[Kurdel]

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?

Click to shrink...

32 years on this earth scouring the wikis and first time I am hearing about this, thanks for sharing will definitely look him up!