Russell Crowe set to star in ‘My Big Fat Australian Dracula Detective’

While that story about Russell Crowe and Liam Neeson punching animals into an Ark for Darren Aronofsky is still just a rumor, Vulture has an insider who claims Crowe is currently onboard to star in a Dracula re-imagining called Harker. No word on how Crowe came to be attached to the script; my guess is barbecue sauce.

Our spies tell us that Warner Bros. is in talks with Russell Crowe about starring in Harker, a reimagining of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that’s being produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. It tells the vampire story from the point of view of Jonathan Harker, who — instead of his traditional role as a lawyer — is now a Scotland Yard detective investigating the Count’s string of grisly murders in England.

The project (co-written by Lee Shipman and Vulture contributing vampire expert Brian McGreevy) began gathering steam at Warner Bros. around this time last year, when director Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown, Orphan) became attached. [Vulture]

If you’ll remember, Orphan was the secret dwarf hooker movie starring mini-Madonna, so I hope for a similar twist here. Anyway, we’ve already got Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter coming out, so under the circumstances, I’m not particularly surprised to hear that we can also expect Gladiator: Dracula Cop (how much better is my title???). My only hope is that for Joe King’s sake, there’s a scene where Detective Harker walks into the crime scene, dabs his two fingers in a pool of blood, smells the fingers, then narrows his eyes and says solemnly, “…This is period.”

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