This Is A Real Thing That Is Happening

Remember "Left Behind?" It's a series of Christian-fundamentlist scifi novels involving The Rapture; a supposedly pre-apocalyptic event (short version: Christians in good-standing are whisked off to Heaven in advance of the rest of us sinners having to suffer through the wars and tyranny launched by The AntiChrist prior to the big Final Battle of Armageddon) that has zero basis in any kind of legitimate Biblical scholarship (it seems to have been invented whole-cloth by fringe preachers around the 1800s) but is fervently believed in by people you will be lucky if you never have to meet.

The books (I think they were up to about 20 volumes at one point) are mainly about a multinational team of resistance fighters called The Tribulation Force (really) battling evil in a post-Rapture world. As you might expect, the damn things get exponentially more bizarre and also more hateful and anti-everything-non-Jesus as they go. Kirk Cameron (of course) backed and starred in a set of low-budget adaptations back when these things were the New Hotness in fundie circles, but now it's apparently being relaunched as a more mainstream-friendly (how?) Red State cash-grab (they're only spending $15 million but are apparently garaunteeing a theatrical run of some kind) by Goldwyn Films. Businesswise it's potentially genius - if Obama is re-elected, the same people who'll go to see this shit anyway will be more primed than ever for a "fight the false prophet!!!" epic.

Oh, and they've also got a can't-miss plan for netting the "let's watch a shitty Christian propaganda movie for ironic lulz!" crowd - they've landed NICHOLAS CAGE to star. No, really. Nicholas Cage - who covered some of this same ground without the "convert or BURN!!!!" hate-mongering in the underrated "Knowing" - will headline the "Left Behind" reboot. There are no words.