Tom Hardy is one gent that certainly isn’t afraid of dreaming bigger. The English thespian looks to re-team with Chris Nolan on The Dark Knight Rises and has been approached to star in another big-budget action pic: the cinematic adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) will be the director of the horror/history mashup, which is also being produced by Tim Burton and will be unleashed in theaters on June 22, 2012.
BD Horror News is reporting that Hardy has been offered the role of Henry Sturges, a vampire that befriends a sixteen year-old Abraham Lincoln and trains the soon-to-be 16th U.S. president for combat against the legions of evil, blood-sucking demons – one of which was responsible for the death of Lincoln’s mother. Honest Abe eventually leads the Union against the vampire-affiliated Confederacy and truly becomes deserving of the title (*drumroll*)…. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
Hardy was quite the charmer as the face-changing Eames in Inception and proved that he can be both menacing and dangerous onscreen when he played the titular character in the biopic Bronson. Sturges is a character that calls for a mix of those qualities and Hardy’s star meter is on the rise, so we imagine that 20th Century Fox will definitely be pushing for the actor to join the cast of their Seth Grahame-Smith novel adaptation.
Bekmambetov is well-renowned for his abilities as a hyper-stylized action director, while Burton’s involvement with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter further assures that the pic will be chockfull of deliciously macabre visuals and intense, bloody, vampire-related violence to boot. We can’t imagine that a pseudo-historical piece that re-envisions one of the most famous U.S. presidents as a killer of the undead will be entirely serious in tone, so the movie will hopefully be a mildly silly but graphic and entertaining action flick.
There’s been no word yet about which actor might possibly be brought onboard to play the famous bearded president himself, though Liam Neeson seems unlikely. Anyone out there have any other ideas about who might be fitting to tackle the lead role in (*drumroll*)…. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter?
