EdgarAllenPoe

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.

While the concept of a feature length adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's poem "The Raven" sounds more suitable for an episode of the Simpsons than a feature film, you can rest assured knowing that James McTiegue, the man behind V for Vendetta and the forthcoming Ninja Assassin, will only borrow from elements to construct his own The Raven, an original story involving Poe himself.

McTeigue discussed his new film with ComingSoon.net, and is currently scouting for suitable locations to film his new thriller in Europe, which features, "...a serial killer loose in 1850's Baltimore and he's using Poe's stories as his methodology, so then he leaves clues at each murder and says it's up to Poe to find him before he kills (again)."

Sounds intriguing. For some odd reason I was immediately reminded of From Hell after reading the synopsis, and since I rather enjoyed that film, I have high hopes for this one. His decision to film in Europe as opposed to Baltimore itself is based around his idea of creating his own idea of Baltimore in the mid-eighteen hundreds.

"There's a European sensibility that could be cool. You could totally get into world creation where I can say, 'This is my version of 1850's Baltimore,' because the Poe film is a fictionalized account, his last five days. It's not real."

For fun, the audio of the poem recited by James Earl James and Homer Simpson can be found after the cut.