ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER Goes to Fox, Bekmambetov to Direct

20th Century Fox has won out the bidding war to release Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The project was optioned from the best selling book of the same name by Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland) and Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted).

Bekmambetov will direct the live action adaptation. This was a highly sought after property that was also pursued by Sony, Paramount, Summit and Universal. Fox went all out in their bid going so far "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." The script for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has already been written by the book's author Seth Grahame-Smith.

It's a 3D re-imagining of Lincoln's life that depicts the 16th president as an axe-throwing, highly accomplished killer of vampires, an obsession of his since those bloodsuckers supposedly took the life of his mother.

Lincoln eventually learns that the vampires have fled to the southern states of the U.S. and are concocting a plan to conquer and enslave the entire country – this in turn leads to the Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy, the latter of which the vampires are aligned with.

Fox is already in meetings with their own production and marketing teams to give this project the full treatment. The budget at this point is just under $70 million dollars.