Scots actor Gerard Butler is to star in the forthcoming movie Priest. No, not a new version of Jimmy McGovern’s controversial film of the same name with Linus Roache as a gay clergymen but a movie adaptation of Min-Woo Hyung’s Tokyopop Manga series Priest. According to various movie trade journals Butler will be playing the renegade priest who aids a small-town sheriff in hunting down a band of vampires in a post-Apocalyptic world. Andrew Douglas (Amityville Horror) is set to direct with one of our movie gods, Sam Raimi, producing (Sam is also involved in producing for another comic to movie vampire tale, 30 Days of Night).
The series ran to around 15 volumes so it will be interesting to see how it distils down to a movie. Certainly the vampire-Western genre isn’t exactly bursting at the seams though, so there is room for one more (offhand I can only think on Billy the Kid Vs Dracula and Near Dark, although sometimes people count Sundown – the Vampire in Retreat as semi-Western). Butler’s new role as a staker of the undead is ironic given that he previously played Dracula himself in Dracula 2000, along with SF genre fave the delectable Jeri Ryan from Voyager. Which gives me a good excuse to post a picture of both of them from that movie, so everyone has someone to ogle this morning and we’re all happy.
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