It was announced earlier this month that Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov had nabbed the rights to Seth Grahame-Smith's novel ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER and would be producing a film version, which now has a screenwriter: Grahame-Smith himself.

Westborough, MA’s Wicked Local interviewed the author, who had this to say about his book: 

“The origin of the idea was just an observation that I reached by hanging out in bookstores,” Grahame-Smith reveals. “A couple of years ago as we were leading up to the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth I kept going into bookstores and seeing that there were Lincoln tables in front of all the bookstores and a new Lincoln book coming out on almost a weekly basis. It seemed like people couldn’t get enough Lincoln. At the same time, this was also when the TWILIGHT phenomenon was sort of reaching its critical mass, so inevitably, there would be a vampire table with vampire books right next to the Lincoln table in all these bookstores. I kept seeing this over and over, and so that is the genesis of where it came from.

“There are things people think they know about Lincoln, but I was surprised through my own research just how much I didn’t know. Lincoln suffered so much tragedy and darkness in his life. Lincoln was sort of a Gothic figure. He was interested in Gothic poetry, he was a fan of Edgar Allan Poe. At one point in his life he could quote ‘The Raven’ from memory. The things that surprised me about Lincoln were some of the darker aspects of Lincoln. That was helpful in creating the story.

“The movie rights were bought by Tim Burton. I’m actually writing the screenplay for him and a couple of other producers. So that’s what I’m in the middle of right now.”

 

 

 

 

 

---

News - Latest