Just a few days ago, it was announced that actress Alice Eve would replace Margarita Levieva in the Chris Sparling-written film ATM. After a year in which she fell in and out of both Captain America: The First Avenger and X-Men: First Class, however, it seems that she wants to keep her plate full at all times.
THR reports that Eve and actor Luke Evans have both signed on for The Raven with John Cusack. Directed by James McTeigue, the film tells the story of a fictionalized Edgar Allan Poe (Cusack) as he hunts down a serial killer who models his crimes after Poe's stories and has kidnapped his fiance. Eve will play Cusack's beau while Evans will play a detective who assists Poe in his search. The role played by Evans was originally to be played by Jeremy Renner, who was forced to drop the project because of his commitments to Mission: Impossible 4. The movie is scheduled to begin shooting on November 9th in Budapest and Serbia.
Everything about this project screams out Sherlock Holmes rip-off but I can't help but feel myself drawn to it. I've been a fan of Poe's books for as long as I've been able to read them, and when you consider the fact that Arthur Conan Doyle took some of Poe's mysteries and adapted them for Holmes (take a close look at Poe's The Gold-Bug and Doyle's The Musgrave Ritual sometime) I think we can give these filmmakers a pass.
