Over the last year, it’s been clear that Hollywood thinks there’s a big career ahead for the currently fairly little known Benjamin Walker, even if the studios haven’t been certain what to cast him in. His name has come up in connection with all manner of roles, and now he’s finally managed to bad a highly coveted one, the title character in the Timur Bekmambetov directed Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
He was recently on a shortlist for the part alongside James D’Arcy, Adrien Brody, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and Josh Lucas, but now Variety says that after all screen-tested, it’s Walker who has the role. Although his screen credits aren’t that extensive, appearing in small roles in the likes of Kinsey and Flags Of Our Fathers, Walker got huge acclaim on Broadway (and plenty of Hollywood attention) for the irreverent rock musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. The experience playing a 19th Century US President must have stood in him good stead for landing the role of Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter reimagines the American president as an axe-wielding, highly trained vampire hunter. Seth Grahame-Smith’s book, on which the movie will be based, gives new context to Lincoln’s rise to the presidency as well as the American Civil War (which was fought because the vampires were in league with the slave owners), suggesting these events were a lot more paranormal than history tells us, and stemmed from Lincoln’s mother’s murder by a vampire when he was a child.
Shooting starts in March for a June 2012 release.