Not the big screen, just lots of small screens. From the LDS Newsroom: Filming Begins on New Book of Mormon Videos. It will not be a beginning-to-end depiction; the project will select certain episodes and events, producing “up to 180 video segments three to five minutes in length, as well as up to 60 more running 10–20 minutes each.” These will no doubt become a go-to resource for Primary teachers, Sunday School teachers, and seminary teachers.

Certainly some good things will result from this project: additional resources for teachers, details viewers might note in a video presentation that they do not notice reading the text, motivation for viewers to go back and read the actual text. Some bad things may come to pass as well. For example, LDS artists generally take some pious liberty with the text when creating visual depictions of scriptural events. Take the photo of the shoot which follows this paragraph, which seems to employ the modern-day LDS cultural notion that good guys are clean shaven and bad guys wear beards.

That’s one example of a more general problem with LDS curriculum in general as well as visual depictions: presentism, or the projection of current doctrines, norms, or practices into the past, whether that is historically accurate or not. Take this comment from the Newsroom article, offered by one Sister Aburto: “This project will help women today see themselves in these accounts in which women and men counsel and work together through trials and personal journeys of faith.” Well, the project might help LDS women today think that way, but there is precious little counseling between men and women in the text of the Book of Mormon because there are only three named women in the book: Sariah, Abish, and Isabel, who are denoted a wife, a slave, and a harlot, respectively.

The article gives a bit of detail on the production itself. “The first Book of Mormon videos are scheduled to be released in the fall of 2018. Portions of the project will be filmed in various locations in North America. The videos will cover elements of about 60 percent of the chapters in the Book of Mormon.” I imagine there will be some selection bias here, which is only natural. I doubt we will see a video depiction of Nephi decapitating the unconscious and helpless Laban or Shiz and Coriantumr whacking each other to death in a grisly sword battle.

At least this one’s not a musical.