Eli Roth developing History Channel series about a young, demon-fightin' Jesus
Having already tested the bounds of “history” with The Bible, to great success, the History Channel is considering revisiting that well with the sort of supernatural-based speculation for which it has long been known, ever since Hitler and aliens first conspired to add it to your cable package. Deadline reports that the network is finalizing deals for The Lost Years, a project that would cover the “lost years” of Jesus—the years mysteriously omitted from scripture, when Jesus was a young man just sort of bumming around, tent-surfing at his friends’ camps, and working a series of menial, directionless jobs, all while his father urged him to straighten up and die for the world’s sins already.
Or actually, possibly something even more sacrilegious than that: The show hails from horror producers Eli Roth and Eric Newman, who would bring their Last Exorcism experience to bear on a story that “explores a theory about Jesus’ origins as an exorcist,” expelling demons from the Holy Land, as documented in the gnostic Gospel of Thomas, That Guy Outside The Subway. Anyway, compared to some of the many other Jesus projects in the works, like the swordfighting Jesus of The Resurrection, History’s Jesus The Demon Slayer, “from the producer of Hostel,” is somehow just keeping pace.