A friend of mine had picked up Seth Grahame Smiths novel ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ days after it hit bookshelves and raved about how awesome it was for weeks. I shrugged it off as an easy idea that probably didn’t have much substance to it. When I heard they were making a movie I still wasn’t impressed and figured it would just be another movie in a long list of movies to include vampires in it to sell tickets. Until I saw the trailer, nothing seemed to be working for me. However, the trailer showed that there was freshness to these vampires. That freshness is actually not fresh at all but what a classic vampire should look and feel like. It was dark and handled by two men, Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, that know how to handle dark subject matter in a really fun way. Having the civil war as the backdrop for this epic fantasy, rooted in history is a lot of fun. Needless to say that having seen the final product, I get why my friend enjoyed reading the book so much.
This weekend I had the pleasure of not only seeing the film, which is a blast by the way, but also interviewing the cast and filmmakers behind the big screen adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s popular novel.
In this interview I talk with author Smith and Director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) about the relationship they had developing the series together from the very start alongside Tim Burton and Jim Lemley. I find it interesting that Seth is actually a lucky guy in that sense. It’s not often that the author whose book is being adapted into a film gets to stay on board to adapt the screenplay. Seth describes some of the challenges of adapting your own work and what he wished made it into the movie while Timur discusses his affinity for only adapting source material he loves. Needless to say it seems like reading the book and seeing the movie are two very different experiences. I plan to flip through the pages of the novel very soon but you should all go out and see the flick.
Here is my interview with Director Timur Bekmambetov and Author/Screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is in cinemas today!
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