Brad Meltzer's 'Book of Lies' trailer! Starring Joss Whedon! And, Christopher Hitchens (!?)

Brad Meltzer’s new, sure-to-best-sell novel, The Book of Lies, has inspired a, um, novel new video, or “trailer,” as the author is calling it. The coolly polished yet exciting video includes Joss Whedon, former EW writer A.J. Jacobs, and Lost‘s Damon Lindelof and Brian K. Vaughn (the latter also author of the great comic book Y: The Last Man) — or “my brothers in nerd,” as Meltzer told me.

Check out The Book of Lies trailer; more info after the jump.

Now then: So there’s a connection between the Biblical figure of Cainand Joel Siegel, co-creator of Superman, and it has to do with a murderweapon? If it didn’t seem so irreligious, I’d say… cool! Oh, heck; I’llsay it anyway. And how great is it that Meltzer got bestsellingatheist/political gadfly Christopher Hitchens to put his surly mug infront of The Book of Lies camera?

Meltzer, who has also written comic books, such as DC Comics’ Identity Crisis and Justice League of America,says he and his publisher created this trailer because, “I had seen somany book trailers which were exactly like every other book commercialyou see: scary-voice-guy tells you what it says on the back of thebook jacket. But none of those trailers ever invested you in thestory. Or the characters. And that’s what the best movie trailersdo. So I wrote what you see. Brandon Graham and Expanded Books didthe filming and production. I treated it like my own personalindependent film. The goal was to create the trailer for the greatestmovie that didn’t exist. And then, like any independent film, I calledin some friends. The goal was simple: we wanted to change how booksare sold (how’s that for presumptuous?).”

Let’s hear it for presumption. Would you buy a book with a trailer like this?