With all the hype and furor this week over
The Avengers and
The Amazing Spider-Man, some may have missed this new theatrical poster for
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, an alternative look at history that transforms one of America's greatest Presidents into a vampire slaying superhero. There's good reason to be excited about this film. The screenplay is co-written by Seth Grahame-Greene, the mastermind behind the wildly popular
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which also happens to be
in film development. The film is directed by
Timur Bekmambetov, whose previous efforts include
Nightwatch and
Wanted.The poster is a riff on the famous
Lincoln Monument in Washington, D.C. In this version though, Honest Abe is seated in the typical horror milieu of a creepy forest. His famous stove pipe hat is tipped down in menacing fashion to hide his face, and in his hand he holds a large axe, which will certainly be used for cutting up something other than wood.
The story imagines a world in which, "President Lincoln's mother is killed by a supernatural creature, which fuels his passion to crush vampires and their slave-owning helpers." (
from IMDB.com) The role of this alt-history Lincoln has been staked by Benjamin Walker, who turned down the chance to play Beast in
X-Men: First Class so that he could play another historical lead in the Broadway musical
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, in which this former President is transformed into an emo rock icon. A number of other historical figures show up in the film, including Abe's wife Mary Todd Lincoln (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Stephen A. Douglas (
Firefly's Alan Tudyk), and Harriet Tubman (Jaqueline Fleming).The book on which the film is based cleverly intersects the actual narrative of Lincoln's life with his fictional life as a vampire hunter. It's an epistolary novel, one told through the secret diary entries of Abe Lincoln, and the structure is perhaps a nod to the most famous of all vampire novels,
Dracula. It traces Lincoln from a young boy killing his first vampire through his early political career, his debate with Stephen Douglas (a political ally of the vampires), all the way through to his presidency and eventual assassination. Though the premise
sounds comedic, the story takes some dark turns, so it will be interesting to see how the producers manage the tone of this film. Another consideration is what, if any, political overtones will be present in the movie. While the vampires in the novel are clearly aligned with the Confederacy, will the movie involve any critical subtext on today's political landscape?With tentpole films like
The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, and
The Dark Knight Rises all budgeted between 200 and 300 million dollars, the 70 million dollar budget of
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter seems modest in comparison. Will this movie get lost in the blockbuster shuffle, or will it become a sleeper hit, like this past summer's
Rise of the Planet of the Apes? What say you? Will you make room in your summer viewing schedule for this alternative history lesson?
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