20th Century Fox has released a new featurette for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, an adaption based on the popular book penned by Seth Grahme-Smith.
In this clip, writer Graham-Smith, director Timur Bekmambetov and producer Tim Burton discuss their take on the protagonist, and how his story is so similar to that of classic comics characters like Batman.
They specifically discuss how he is embodied with the primary elements of a comics super hero. For example, he’s got an easily identifiable costume, a unique tool and weapon set, and, like Batman, a horrible tragedy in his past to make it all fall into place.
True, the above-mentioned trio doesn’t really talk about it, but the Lincoln of the film also seems to have a ‘secret identity’ of sorts. Personally, I believe it’s intended to be a story that fills in the gaps between what we really do know about Lincoln and some critical missing facts. As such, all the vampire hunting, and even the vampires themselves are part of this secret, underground world.
It’s certainly going to be very different from the Lincoln bio-pic that Spielberg is currently working on, but the more I hear about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the more it seems like it takes itself as seriously as possible, using the vampires as a device to create a very social, yet character driven feature.
Here’s the theatrical trailer:
Still no official synopsis has yet been released for the film, but we have this from the book the film is based on:
Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother’s bedside. She’s been stricken with something the old-timers call “Milk Sickness.”
“My baby boy…” she whispers before dying.
Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother’s fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.
When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, “henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose…” Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.
While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.
Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which stars Benjamin Walker, Rufus Sewell, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jimmi Simpson, Robin McLeavy, and Alan Tudyk, hits theaters on June 22, 2012.
