Sylvester Stallone and Edgar Allan Poe

Posted on May 25, 2005

The Guardian reports on Sylvester Stallone's new movie project: a film about Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe. Stallone will write the script and direct the film, which goes into production in the fall of 2005. Stallone wrote a screenplay based on Poe's life three years ago.

Stallone is also believed to have been drawn by Poe's moodiness, a characteristic reflected in Rambo and Rocky, and dramatic letters home from the University of Virginia, where gunfights between students were not uncommon. One despatch described a gruesome duel whose loser was likely to have "pieces of flesh as large as my hand cut out" after a misfire caught him in the arm.
The production, revealed in this week's issue of film trade newspaper Variety, is also likely to find rich material in Poe's love life, which started with an unfulfilled crush on a schoolfriend's mother. The poet progressed to a feisty girlfriend called Elmira Royster before marrying his cousin Virginia. She was only 13 but they became a devoted couple.

So, who will play Poe himself? Not Stallone, apparently. The actor said in prior interviews that "there's no way the baggage that I would bring to the role could ever be assimilated by the public." We think he's right.