Keanu Reeves admitted he “didn’t write anything” for his new novel and recalled “crying” after reading it for the first time.
The 59-year-old actor has teamed up with British “weird fiction” author China Miéville for The Book of Elsewhere, which is inspired by her own comic book series BRZRKR.
Explaining why he decided to let his collaborator write the story, Keanu revealed that he was thrilled when his favourite author handed him a copy.
Speaking in an interview with The Guardian In an interview with the newspaper, she said: “I didn’t want to write the book. I wanted another creator to take that journey. So ultimately China wrote the novel. I didn’t write any of the novel.”
The book, which was released on July 23, tells the story of an immortal warrior who spends millennia trying to understand his own immortality.
Keanu Reeves, 59, admitted he “didn’t write anything” of his new novel and recalled “crying” after reading it for the first time (pictured May 2023)
The actor teamed up with British “weird fiction” author China Miéville (pictured) for The Book of Elsewhere, which is inspired by her own comic book series BRZRKR.
The pair first met face-to-face in Berlin in 2021 and went through China’s first draft in a series of Zoom meetings – the author admitted it took him some time to wrap his head around Keanu’s ideas.
But in the end Keanu was very happy with the final result.
She exclaimed: ‘I thought: ‘I’m reading a China Miéville novel, BRZRKR! Yes! What, what, what? And then, why am I crying? Why am I feeling so bad?’
“‘So what’s that? So what? Wait, I need to know… what’s that damn word?’ Oh, yeah. Great.”
The Keanu comic was first published in 2021 with writer Matt Kindt and artist Ron Garney.
China’s writing style has been described as “new weird fiction” and her novels span a variety of genres, from American Westerns to crime noir.
His “weird fiction” style meshes well with the actor’s comics, which center on Berzerker, an immortal hybrid of God and man who has a strong tendency toward violence, which affects his sanity.
The character ends up working for the US government to uncover the truth about his life. BRZRKR is set to become a live-action Netflix series.
Explaining why he decided to let his collaborator write the story, Keanu revealed that he was thrilled when his favourite author handed him a copy (pictured with his comic).
Keanu was very pleased with the end result. He exclaimed: “I was like, ‘I’m reading a novel by China Miéville called BRZRKR! Yeah! What, what, what? And then, why am I crying?'”
In 2021, it was announced that Netflix would be developing a live-action film based on the comic book, in which Keanu will star.
Keanu has previously described his BRZRKR comic series as “an examination of” violence, exploring how violence is used and controlled.
“We’re looking at violence in the drive for violence and how it’s used, and how it’s attempted to be controlled,” Reeves said. People in 2021. ‘And trying to understand the character that maybe we can’t relate to, being immortal, but we relate to the idea of wanting to be immortal.’
The A-list actor told the outlet that people “can relate to the idea of the imagination of” immortality, which fuels BRZRKR’s story.
“We have vampire stories that talk about that,” he said. “But that’s part of the human condition, whether it’s the living condition of our mortality or the fulfillment of the human desire that we have no mortality.”
“In the context of violence, which is everywhere, it is survival, it is conquest, it is devouring. So it is present everywhere, and we are trying to look at it from different perspectives… It is an analysis of it.”
Keanu won the hearts of the Internet again last year when an adorable video surfaced of the actor meeting a nine-year-old superfan at a comic book store.
Kindt said he, Reeves and Kindt worked on the project for “at least two years,” much of it remotely amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Keanu won the hearts of the Internet again last year when an adorable video surfaced of the actor meeting a nine-year-old superfan at a comic book store.
YouTuber Noah of Noah’s Amazing Reviews had the chance to meet his favorite actor during a BRZRKR signing in March 2023 at Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles.
The young man was delighted to meet the actor, who delighted him with a brief performance of his character from Toy Story 4.