Tim Burton & Timur Bekmambetov's ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

I imagine Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov's adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith's second revisionist horror mash-up Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will be a blood thirsty animated affair, shot in a similar style to David Fincher's adaptation of The Goon when all is said and done. Burton/Bekmambetov worked together on producing the animated 9 for the big screen last year which admittedly forms some of my opinion on this (especially as a third producer from that movie is also on this) but in truth, I can't think of any other format that will suit this material better. At least on screen anyways as comic books, video games and action figures would be better served than a movie but everything is being made into a film these days, so this is adaptation was always to be expected. In live-action, seeing the 16th and most recognisable President in American history as an "ax-throwing, highly trained vampire assassin" will look Z-movie stupid. It would make Hammer's Dracula movies with Christopher Lee look like the serious German silent pictures of the 30's. Much like this trailer for the novel...

Seth Grahame-Smith wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which Natalie Portman is attached to lead in a live-action adaptation that David O'Russell (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees) of all people, is said to be circling. I kinda think both properties COULD be made into really fun movies but I fear they won't be. This is Hollywood after all, who couldn't make a fun movie out of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - surely the biggest revisionist history foul-up of all time.