Paul Bettany is going vampire hunting

Posted on April 1, 2009
Filed Under Actors, Adaptation, Directors

I have this built in vampire-and-werewolf detector that goes of as soon as I lay my eyes on any form of text/print/image resembling either a bloodsucker or a howler. Today the sensors went off again. Praise the Lord.

The Hollywood Reporter tells us that frightfully intense actor Paul Bettany is in negotiations to star in “Priest,” a horror Western that Michael De Luca and
Josh Donen are producing. The move would reunite Bettany with director Scott Stewart, for whom he just finished starring in “Legion,” an upcoming supernatural thriller.

An adaptation of a TokyoPop comic book, “Priest” is set in a world ravaged by centuries of war between man and vampire and follows a warrior priest (Bettany) who turns against the church to track down a murderous band of vampires who have kidnapped his niece. Cory Goodman wrote the screenplay.

“I knew the moment I saw Stewart’s first cut of ‘Legion’ that Bettany was Priest and so I mentioned it to him immediately,” Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper said.

Well, I don’t know if Bettany is the perfect priest, but he was damn scary as that crazy albino monk Silas in “The Da Vinci Code.”

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