What would you guess is the “hottest property in Hollywood right now?”

A: Seth Grahame-Smith’s mashup, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Grand Central, 3/2/10).

According to the movie news site Deadline, “After a hard fought auction that included Sony and Paramount and Universal and Summit, Twentieth Century Fox has emerged the victor.” Director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy) and producer Tim Burton optioned the book earlier this year. Shooting is to begin in March.

Deadline adds this wonderful detail,

Fox wanted the project so badly that when the filmmakers came onto the lot, the studio had bloody axes and bloody footprints strewn about, and arranged for a bugle player in a Confederate uniform playing “Taps” to accompany them to the meeting with studio executives.

Looks like cheesy tactics still work in movieland.

Meanwhile, there hasn’t been any news on the grandmother of the genre, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, also by Grahame-Smith (Quirk, 4/5/09), since Natalie Portman, who is producing it and plans to play the lead, told MTV in August that director David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees, Three Kings) is working on the script. UPDATE: Mike Fleming at Deadline says he doesn’t believe Portman will do PP&Z .

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 at 10:44 am and is filed under Books & Movies, Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.