Joaquin Phoenix to Play Edgar Allan Poe in 'The Beautiful Cigar Girl'

Joaquin Phoenix is either crazy, brilliant or crazy brilliant. Proving that there is no such thing as bad publicity, he abandoned his prolific acting career in favor of a wild beard, dark shades and a rap career that went as quickly as it came. His final film was 2008's Two Lovers, a romantic drama that I never knew existed until just now. After two years of Joaquinless cinema, Shock TIll You Drop has brought to our attention the news that Mr. Phoenix will apparently lose the crumb catcher and ditch the sunglasses for his newest role as the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe.

The film will be an adaptation of the novel "The Beautiful Cigar Girl" by Daniel Stashower. The book weaves together the story of Mary Rogers, a clerk at a tobacco store frequented by popular writers who was found horribly mutilated in the Hudson River, and Edgar Allan Poe, who used the events surrounding Rogers' murder to pen his story "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt."

Not much is known about the film, as no writer or director has been attached, but the book seems like one Hell of a read, one that follows in the footsteps of The Devil in the White City, a pseudo-novelistic and historical account of the relationship between the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the country's first serial killer, H. H. Holmes.

The only bit of information we have so far comes from the India Times, which reports that Resul Pookutty, who won an Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing for Slumdog Millionaire, will be doing the sound for the film.