Here's our first official look at
John Cusack as American writer, cosmologist and cryptographer
Edgar Allen Poe in
James McTeigue's (V for Vendetta, Ninja Assassin) revisionist supernatural detective thriller
The Raven. In this highly theatrical fictional version of his final days, Poe, the author of so many gruesome murder mysteries, becomes involved in his own macabre case and is in pursuit of a killer who mirrors many that he himself has written about. The film is currently shooting the Gothic thriller in Serbia, from a script by
Ben Livingston and
Hannah Shakespeare.
Alice Eve plays Poe's kidnapped fiancee, and
Luke Evans is the detective who partners up with Poe. There's lots of potential here... Poe is a rather mysterious figure of 19th century Gothic literature and in many ways he was Sherlock Holmes before Sherlock Holmes existed but then V For Vendetta had limitless promise also and was turned into a pretty but substance-free adaptation by McTeigue. Let's hope he's grown.