Mickey Rourke as Nephi, kickin’ Lamanite ass.

SALT LAKE CITY — In a move that has been called “daring, thought provoking, and honestly pretty kick ass” by many members of the LDS film-making community, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints officially announced via Church mouthpiece MormonNewsRoom.Org that it would be relaunching it’s widely panned 2004 film adaption of The Church’s holiest scripture “under a new, rougher pretense”.

“While the 2004 adaptation of the sacred scripture was an honorable attempt, the brethren don’t feel it really promoted the grittier aspects of the narrative that would be widely appealing to audiences,” says a press release from MormonNewsRoom.org.

Whereas the prior attempt was called The Book of Mormon Movie, Volume 1: The Journey, the flagship for new series, slated for production in 2014, will be titled The Book of Mormon Movie: Hot Faith, Cold Steel, a new branding that, according to LDS Church spokesman Michael Otterson, shows “we mean to get down an’ dirty with this one. We’ve definitely been seeing through a glass, darkly, and don’t know how to go about it any other way”.

Among much internet buzz already emerging about the production, the contracting for the role of Mormon powerhouse Nephi to Mickey Rourke, famed leading man of 2008’s The Wrestler, has been particularly tantilizing to potential audiences. When asked about the casting of Rourke, director Oliver Stone, who has just signed to the film for an undisclosed fee, reportedly said,“Imagine watching John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, but in some fucked up alternate dimension where Snake Plisken takes a time machine to the ancient Near-East and throat punches Darth Vader in a series of epic slow-motion shots until his crumpled, fist-shredded body gives up some really ominous seeming, possibly cursed, golden books, all while dealing with an internalized struggle over his own long-seated insecurity which is rooted in an upbringing steeped in an overall unhealthy family structure… Rourke’s got this shit in the bag. We’re talking more beheading, more body clogged rivers, and we are definitely putting the MAN in the Army of Helaman”.

Details on the remaining two films in the upcoming trilogy are limited, but according to Otterson, the remaining films in the epic will have, “never before released segments straight from the cutting board of the Urim and Thummim” and “the kind of mind-bending, shit-your-skull-out-your-pants plot twists you’d only expect from the likes of M. Night Shymalan.¨