Horror writer Edgar Allen Poe hasn't fared too well on screen in recent years. The John Cusack-starring The Raven failed to set many [telltale] hearts fluttering, while Sylvester Stallone's Poe biopic never even got off the ground. Kudos to Idris Elba then, who's ignoring those troubled projects and striding forth with one of his own. Through his Green Door production company he's developing Marc Olden's off-the-wall historical adventure Poe Must Die as a potential movie trilogy.
FIrst published in 1978, Olden's weighty tome finds a depressed and frail Poe at the bottom of a bottle in 1840s New York. Recently arrived is English martial artist Pierce James Figg, who's been sent to find Poe by none other than Charles Dickens. Poe and Figg then join forces on the trail of the sorceror who murdered Figg's wife and is himself searching for the Throne of Solomon, which he believes will give him immortality and power over all the demons of hell. So that's a potential problem for the entire world...
There's clearly scope here for a historical action romp along Downey Sherlock Holmes lines. There's no indication yet of whether Elba intends to appear in the film or whether he's just producing. But you'd have to suspect he's got his eye on Figg as a potential starring role.
There are no other names attached (or at least revealed) at the moment in the writing, directing or cast departments, so Poe Must Die is clearly some way off yet. We'll next see Elba alongside Sean Penn in Pierre Morel's The Gunman on March 20, followed by Avengers: Age Of Ultron on April 24 and Second Coming on May 8.
Olden's novel is currently out of print in ye olde book form, but is available digitally from Mysterious Press.