Filmmaker/beardfan Steven Spielberg has long been planning a story of United States 16th president (#1 in tallness) Abraham Lincoln, but is apparently now getting serious about putting the lanky emancipator’s story on film. Who does he like for the part?
Spielberg was obviously impressed by Qui-Gon Jinn’s impressive Jedi whiskers, and is looking to put his Jew-rescuer Liam Neeson in the stovepipe hat (Tom Hanks was also once rumored for the part). The Dreamworks film will be based on Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography "The Uniter: The Genius of Abraham Lincoln," and will focus on Lincoln‘s White House years from 1861-1865 and his relations with his secretaries and cabinet officers. If memory of high school history serves, the star of the penny and $5 bill also did important stuff like freeing slaves and helping end the Civil War before a bad night at the theater.
Neeson, currently getting attention for discussing the skin-shimmy in Kinsey, will next be seen giving combat lessons to Orlando Bloom in Kingdom of Heaven and Christian Bale in Batman Begins. Spielberg is rushing to finish his War of the Worlds remake sometime before its release date in a few months (I bet the FX guys aren’t getting much sleep).