Keanu Reeves admits he ‘didn’t write any’ of his new novel and reveals he cried with joy after reading the first draft by China Mieville

Keanu Reeves has admitted that he ‘didn’t write any’ of his new novel as he recalled ‘crying’ after reading it for the first time. 

The actor, 59, teamed up with British ‘weird fiction’ author China Miéville for The Book of Elsewhere, which is inspired by his own BRZRKR comic series. 

Explaining why he chose to let his collaborator write the story, Keanu revealed he got emotional when his favourite author handed him a copy. 

Speaking in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, he said: ‘I didn’t want to write the book. I wanted another creator to take that journey. So, ultimately, China has written the novel. I didn’t write any of the novel.’

The book which was released on July 23, tells the tale of an immortal warrior who spends millennia trying to understand his own immortality.

The pair first met face-to-face in Berlin in 2021, and went through China’s first draft in a series of Zoom meetings, with the author admitting it took him some time to grasp Keanu’s ideas.

But ultimately Keanu was very happy with the end result. 

He exclaimed: ‘I was like, “I’m reading a ‘BRZRKR’ China Miéville novel! Yeah! What, what, what? And then like, why am I crying? Why am I feeling so much?”

“‘And then what is that? And then? Wait, I need to like … what’s that f******word? Oh, yeah. Great.”‘ 

Keanu’s 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’ with his novels spanning several genres, ranging from American western to detective noir. 

His ‘weird fiction’ style ties in well with the actor’s comic books – which centres around Berzerker, an immortal hybrid of God and man who has a strong tendency toward violence, impacting his sanity. 

The character eventually winds up in the employment of the U.S. government to find out the truth about his life. BRZRKR is set to be made into a Netflix live-action series.

In 2021, it was announced that Netflix would develop a live-action film based on the comic book, which Keanu is attached to star in.

Keanu has previously described his comic book series BRZRKR as ‘an examination of’ violence, which explores how violence is used and controlled. 

‘We are looking at violence in the impulse of violence and how it’s used, and how it tries to be controlled,’ Reeves told People in 2021. ‘And trying to understand the character that we might not be able to relate to it, 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 the story-line of BRZRKR. 

‘We have vampiric stories that speak about that,’ he said. ‘But that’s part of the human condition, whether it’s the living condition of our mortality or human wish-fulfilment that we don’t have mortality.

‘In the context of violence, which is everywhere, it’s survival, it’s conquest, it’s eating. So it plays everywhere, and we’re trying to look at it from different … It’s an examination of it.’

Kindt said that he, Reeves and Kindt worked on the project for ‘at least two years,’ much of it remotely amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

Keanu won over the internet’s hearts again last year when an adorable video of the actor meeting a nine-year-old super fan at a comic book store surfaced. 

YouTuber Noah of Noah’s Amazing Reviews got the chance to meet his favourite actor during a signing of BRZRKR in March 2023 at Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles.

The youngster was over the moon meeting the actor – who delighted him with a brief impression of his character from Toy Story 4.