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20th Century Fox didn’t waste time after buying the screen package Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the Seth Grahame-Smith novel that will be directed by Timur Bekmambetov and produced by Timur, Tim Burton and Jim Lemley. The studio has set a June 22, 2012 release for the film, which has a script by Grahame-Smith and is casting now.
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yikes. rushing a bad script into production with a style director who gets shitty performances, has no handle on story? big miss.
The bigger problem is, it’s just incredibley stupid $hit!
We could all come with stuff like MLK: Ghost Catcher
or, Thomas Jefferson: Mummy Killer
But H’wood gets on a bender and just won’t quit until something is beaten over the head a million times. This $hit it going to bomb at the box-office. Rule #1, don’t trivialize national heroes. It’s like adultry, it’s not funny.
Besides, I think even the Mac-hipster crowd can see you’re trying way too hard. And if you’re TRYING to be cool, you’ve already failed.
Abe: “Gall and wormwood! Doth my eyes deceiveth me? ‘Tis a vampire feign to sup on the blood of an innocent young female! You there! Vile creature! Blaggard! In the name of all that is holy, and as embattled leader of our blessed union, I commandeth thee to relinquish yon damsel from thine evil grasp and return henceforth to the dark fiery pit of Hell from whence ye came!!”
Audience: “Zzzzzzzzz.”
that’s funny1 you made me laugh. i read the book, and liked it. abraham lincoln with a bloody axe would be a great tattoo.
Such a terrible idea. There needs to be some sort of Citizen’s Brigade that will vote to intercept ideas like this before a studio will buy, distribute or develop them. The end result would be QUALITY movies.
Liam Neeson should do this Lincoln!
Why not cast the guy who played the young Liam Neeson in Kinsey–Benjamin Walker? Younger hotter cast
Amazing! Am I the only person tired of vampires? It seems that the studios want the entire world to get really depressed. The only mantra all the executives repeat is “go darker”. And yes, Timur is a horrible director, who can’t work with actors.
Actually, I’m more fed up with the zombie meme that seems to be infecting everything, no pun intended. At least with vampires we can talk about Kate Beckinsale.
Is no one offended by the idea of exploiting the slaves once more. Slave owners are vampires? Slaves are food? Harriet Tubman delivers silver bullets? Kids will grow up believing this…
does anyone else have a problem with the basic premise of this? that Lincoln’s true motivation to end slavery is that vampires are feeding on slaves? and that john wilkes booth is a vampire? Can you imagine the backlash that this is going to get?
No, and I don’t think anyone will care – it’s just silliness. I’d be surprised if it gets past $16M opening weekend.
Lincoln was not anti-slavery. He was anti-seccesionist.
The voice of reason and truth. Rare to see on these boards.
Wow! This is not a serious drama. This is a fictional story. I’m pretty sure everyone when to grade school & knows what really happened. There wont b any backlash because the author wasn’t trying to say anything profound by writing this story! It’s not serious. If he meant it to be a serious drama, then ya it would have backlash but this is just a goofy horror flick. stop trying to make this film out to be something more than it is!!
Please cast Liam Neeson as Lincoln. Since Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’ movie is basically scrapped (and probably would’ve been boring as sin anyway), Neeson could kill in this role.
Zachary Quinto. Tall. Lincoln-esque. Sexy. Built-in geek fans.
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson star Benjamin Walker
How can they get away with desecrating the memory of one of the greatest Presidents of all time? What next? Mother Theresa; zombie hunter? Ghandi; alien killer. For shame.
Actually, literature is next with ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ on the way.
Didn’t realize that the author of the books is the creator of MTV’s ‘The Hard Times of RJ Berger.’ Yikes.
And what does THAT tell you???
Unbelievable what makes some executive say “yep, that’s earned a greenlight.”
Then dont watch it or support it with your hard earned money. No one is forcing anyone to buy tickets if you feel that strongly about a silly fictional horror flick (if that).
The more I study the pattern in Hollywood the more I understand keeping the status quo employed and relevant takes precedent over producing great bodies of work. It’s either that or the inmates are running the asylum.
I have everything I’ve heard about this. Was wondering if anyone read the book? Is there any way this won’t be as horrible as it sounds?
I’m about half way through the book, and it really is good. I don’t know how well it would do as a movie though.
Agree. I read the book and if you can lighten up enough to enjoy and go with the premise, it’s actually a pretty entertaining read. Plenty will bash it without giving it a chance though.
The book is awesome.
How about a movie called “Frustrated Filmmaker: Studio Exec Assassin?”
Amanda Bynes in Easy A:
Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!
Can we please go after Bruckheimer first?
This made me laugh.
I hope this is one of those, “it looks crappy on paper but will work on film” things. 20th has been cranking out some crap lately, they use to have films up for awards every year.
I don’t get the hate for this. I’m not thrilled that Timur Bekmambetov is directing, because he’s the most overrated director alive, but the story sounds like fun. Hopefully Burton keeps Timurs “let’s cut every 2 seconds and use CGI camera flourishes that makes everything look really fake and throws audiences out of the movie” crap to a minimum. This could be another Sleepy Hollow if they do it right, and didn’t that do more than $100M domestic?
I’m also curious about how many of the commenters here have read the book. I’m reading it right now and enjoying it. I can see where this would make a good horror / action movie in a historical setting. To use Lincoln in a fictitious role in this story is no worse than doing it in any other story.
Now if people have read the script and it’s bad, then that’s a problem that I hope FOX will rectify. But the book is entertaining to me as someone who likes supernatural genre stories. I’m interested in seeing what they do with the movie.
I also like the casting ideas offered. Liam Neeson is a bit older than the Lincoln character during most of the story. The story spans entire life, but a lot of the action is in his younger days. Zachary Quinto would be good. As I am reading the book, I also think that Jared Padalecki would make a great Lincoln.
I read the book and I enjoyed it thoroughly. A good script could make for a very interesting film – it’s so fantastic in its premise and I too want to see where they go with this.
Despite the exploitative title, the book was actually an engaging read. It chronicled Lincoln’s life from early childhood to his death and had a good balance of action and emotion. It took the time to go into Lincoln’s grief over losing loved ones early on in his life, as well as being isolated by the secrets he had to keep later on. Tonally it felt similar to “Interview With The Vampire”.
The problem with the book was that the most entertaining part of the story was the first half, which was about young Lincoln turning into a vampire hunter. The second half – which dealt with Lincoln as a public figure – was about him becoming president and continuing the battle by means of politics, with vampires trying to sabotage him along the way. (Vampires were slave owners, so Lincoln’s fight against slavery was really a fight against vampires.)
Still, I felt there actually was a pretty decent movie in there.
The script, though, abandoned the sense of emotional realism that allowed the book to pull off its outlandish premise and instead turned the story into a Rush Hour style action fest. And while I’m actually a fan of action comedies, in this case I think it hurt the project – because it turned it into the exactly the kind of exploitative crap-fest that most people groaningly imagine when they hear “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter”.
And Bekmambetov’s involvement doesn’t really inspire much hope in me that the material will somehow be elevated from what’s on the page. He’s good with visuals and action, but not the kind of director to insert heart and soul into a film.
Yay, someone who read the book and the script. It’s disturbing to hear that the script does not capture the most entertaining features of the book. As I’m reading this (and before it was optioned), I thought it would make an interesting movie (hence thinking J. Padalecki would be good in it). It would be a shame to waste such a unique (though some think outlandish) twist in genre storytelling.
I hope that someone at FOX will see what you are saying about the script and make some effort to “doctor” it.
I wonder how much they can actually doctor the script, though, even if they wanted to.
The book had a very fundamental structural problem in that its first half was the origin story of a vampire hunter, while the second half was the story of a president trying to achieve a political goal against an anonymous cabal of vampires. It worked alright in the book but was too disjointed for a movie, especially since Lincoln was very passive in the latter half (he was being protected by good vampires who were against slavery).
So what they did in the script was to reinforce the first part of the story (i.e. LIncoln as vampire hunter) by amping up the action and replacing the amorphous cabal with a single master vampire who has a showdown with Lincoln at the end. But in the process the script had to jettison emotional realism and historical accuracy. So it ended up being almost a caricature of the book it was based on.
To me it feels like they should have chosen either the first half of the book for the script, or the second half – because both are very different in terms of their emotional and action throughlines. But trying to jam both into a single movie might just be too much, no matter how much they try fix it…
I’d rather see Abe buddy up with Bill & Ted again on another excellent adventure. Party on, dudes!
Isn’t the joke, gag, story over after you hear the title? I mean, title says it all… why would you EVER want to know more?
This pony’s one trick dies with its name.
as both a huge student of Lincoln & a lover of vampire lore I couldn’t wait to read the book which I thought was funny, scary & a brilliant twist on American history. I hope they can capture that mix with honesty & originality and if they succeed it should be a brilliant flick. but perhaps everyone else in this self felating town would prefer yet another sequel of some sort.
They should cast Allin Kempthorne from The Vampires of Bloody Island. We need to see more of him in vampire type roles. Although maybe he’s a bit too English for this?
Y y y ru going to take some one that played such in Inportain part of histroy and put vampires with him it’s outrageous!!! I’ll say! I’m so sick of vampires! It’s verry silly to take him and put him with vampires! Vampires r not even real!