It’s funny how things wind up in the zeitgeist and we end up with a bunch of gladiator movies, two asteroid films, two werewolf flicks, etc.
A lot of times, it’s not because anyone’s trying to rip anybody off, although there is often a big game of chicken to see who will drop out first, like we saw with the two Snow White movies this year.
Thankfully, there’s room enough for two Abraham Lincoln films this year, because they couldn’t be more different from each other.
While Daniel Day Lewis playing Honest Abe should be a dramatic powerhouse, genre fans of course can’t wait for Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, which is hitting theaters in June courtesy of Fox.
The film is based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote the screenplay for Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows adaptation, and as Benjamin Walker, who plays Lincoln, told the L.A. Times, “Since you establish what it is so clearly and bluntly with the title, how much freedom does that give you to be real. We get to re-envision of the greatest American heroes as a hero in a thriller.”
Yes, the story stays true to the history of Lincoln, but in addition to abolishing slavery, here he works hard to abolish a more supernatural kind of evil. Walker is also a young actor, he’s 29, and he also previously starred in a stage play where he played Andrew Jackson. Vampire Hunter creator Grahame-Smith also told the Times he was contacted by Tim Burton about the project while he was still writing it, so he knew once he finished the book he would be diving right into the screenplay.
Burton, who loves classic B movies, told writer Gina McIntyre he wanted to see this idea reach the screen because, “I grew up on weird perverse movies,” although funny enough, early in the process they all decided not to make it campy. This didn’t make the search for a convincing Abraham Lincoln easy either, but when we finally see the movie, we’ll see if they pulled it off.
After all, it’s important to remember in horror films you’re taking a pretty ridiculous premise and trying to keep it off the ground by making it as believable as possible. We know a fish can’t eat a boat, but it did in Jaws. Here’s hoping Grahme and Burton will convince us that Lincoln indeed abolished not just slavery, but bloodsuckers as well.
