As previously reported, The Raven stars John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe in the final days of his life. Luke Evans plays a detective who teams with Poe when a vicious serial killer kidnaps the author’s really hot fiancee (Alice Eve) and begins modeling his killings after Poe’s work. Talk about commitment from a writer. I doubt you’d see Tucker Max on the scene with a magnifying glass if a killer were to start murdering women in the douchiest ways possible.

The Raven opens in theaters March 9th, 2012. (Bloody Disgusting)

McTeigue just completed the John Cusack with a goatee thriller The Raven, which was also a FilmNation project. Production head Aaron Ryder said, “After working with James on The Raven and then seeing a cut of the film, it was very clear to us that we needed to make his next movie.” If he could make a movie about a karate-fighting Edgar Allan Poe awesome, there’s no limit to his abilities. (Deadline)

The reason for this change is not known, although some are speculating it’s so as not to conflict with an adaptation of the scifi short story “The Raven,” which is also in production. Which is total BS, because Poe thought of the title “The Raven” first.

Anyway, it’s not all bad news for The Untitled Raven Project, since it also has a release date: March 9, 2012. So mark your gothic, Poe-themed desk calendars now. (/Film)

Here’s a pic of John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe in The Raven. As you can see, he’s holding a raven. It’s so on the nose you might not be able to conceive it. Good job, studio. You completely surpassed our threshold for simplicity and looped back the other way. Now we’re all baffled as to what the film, directed by James McTeigue, is portraying. Maybe you could work on a title sequence that’s completed constructed by, with, and for ravens. (Vulture)

_{Quoth the Raven, "Herpity derp!"}

John Cusack has announced via his Twitter that he will be playing all around bad boy Edgar Allan Poe in James McTeigue‘s thriller The Raven. The movie won’t be about a guy in a room who keeps hearing strange knocking (Cusack already did that in 1408), but instead "a serial killer thriller in which the famed horror author would have to solve clues of a string of murders based on his stories."

Considering Poe wasn’t a stranger to smoking a boat-load of opium for inspiration, I wonder if they’ll incorporate that character trait into the film. Nothing would give me more pleasure than watching John Cusack stumbling around 1850s Baltimore stoned out of his gourd on barbiturates. It would be like a really old school episode of "The Wire." (ComingSoon)