John Cusack to Play Poe in ‘The Raven’

John Cusack will portray Edgar Allen Poe in James McTeigue’s The Raven, a fictional thriller where the gothic poet helps hunt a serial killer.

The script, by Hannah Shakespeare and Ben Livingston, plays on the mystery surrounding Poe’s last drunken, delirious days in October 1849 before he died at the age of 40.  The suspect uses Poe’s published work to stage grisly murders, such as a sophisticated swinging blade mechanism connected to “The Pit and the Pendulum,” an elaborate costume ball that mirrors his “The Masque of the Red Death” and, of course, “The Raven.”

Cusack, 44, skipped the formalities of publicists and press releases by announcing his official hiring on his busy Twitter account last month.  It has been over a year since McTeigue, best known for V for Vendetta and Ninja Assassin, signed to direct the period film and said he was in the midst of casting.

The other lead left to cast is Detective Emmett Fields, “a meticulous and intense man” investigating the crimes in Baltimore.  Jeremy Renner was once offered the role, but is busy this fall with Mission: Impossible IV.  There’s also Emily, a young poet and fresh fiance of Poe’s that becomes tied up in the mystery herself.