The Book of Mormon Movie

Rogers's inspiration was the Cecil B. DeMille 1956 version of The Ten Commandments. He envisioned The Book of Mormon as one long historical epic. His plan was to make nine films that cover the entire story of the book. The film's length is two hours, and it was revealed on the DVD commentary that the first cut of the film was two hours and forty minutes.

Noah Danby was cast as Nephi because of his strong resemblance to the art of Arnold Friberg, who created a series of paintings inspired by The Book of Mormon. He had never read the Book of Mormon prior to his casting. Danby is a devout Lutheran, and while at first he didn't feel comfortable in making the film due to religious differences, he has said in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter that he took the role to gain experience as an actor.

The desert scenes were filmed in Utah in the spring, and it was very cold. The "great and spacious building" was a five foot miniature. The boat does not appear in the theatrical version of the scene in which the family arrives in the promised land. It was digitally added to that scene for the DVD version. Mike Ripplinger directed and filmed the behind the scenes portion on the DVD release. The film was mentioned in Paul C. Gutjahrs 2012 book The Book of Mormon: A Biography.

The film was rated PG 13 for "a scene of violence", having contained an image of Nephi with blood splatter on his face after beheading Laban. This image was removed for home media releases, and the film received a PG rating on DVD.

Produced for $1.5 million, Book of Mormon opened in 29 theaters on September 12, 2003 and made $114,573 in its first weekend, ranking number 41 in the domestic box office. The film played for 35 weeks before closing on May 13, 2004, its widest release being 38 theaters, and it had grossed $1,680,020. It is the fourth highest grossing film in the history of LDS cinema.

The film was widely panned by Latter day Saint and non Latter day Saint critics. Variety described it as "[w]ell meaning but often as tediously earnest as a Sunday sermon" In the Mormon Blogosphere, A Motley Vision gave it a grade of C−. In a 2010 literary study of the Book of Mormon, scholar Grant Hardy mentioned the film as "a not entirely successful attempt to bring the Book of Mormon to the big screen. ":20

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes scored 17% of 6 critics giving the film a positive review.