Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland), Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) and Jim Lemley are teaming to produce a big screen adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s new book “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” which was released in stores today. Burton, Bekmambetov and Jim Lemley produced Focus Features’ 9 together as well.
Lionsgate previously picked up the film rights to the author’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which Natalie Portman is attached to star in and David O.Russell is circling to direct.
The following is how publisher Grand Central Publishing describes “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”:
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.
A promo trailer for the book was also released and you can watch it using the player below.
