Ron Perlman is Elvis
In what he calls an "on record" statement, actor Paul Giamatti announced to Ain’t It Cool News that Ron Perlman will play Elvis in the upcoming Bubba Nosferatu, a sequel to Bubba Ho-Tep.
"He’s a great guy," Giamatti says of the actor. "He’s an amazingly great guy and I’ve always loved him as an actor, so when he actually was interested, I couldn’t believe our luck man, like ‘This is f—ing great!’ He’s a really terrific guy."
In the sequel, Giamatti plays "Colonel" Tom Parker, Elvis’s manager. Giamiatti wouldn’t reveal too many specifics, but hints at quite a bit of Nosferatu‘s plot line.
"You know part of the great thing about this is not only are these wonderful genre movies, but [director Don Coscarelli] is actually taking a weird, interesting take on the whole Elvis myth and kind of investigating the whole Elvis myth in a really interesting way," Giamatti describes the film. "So it’s got a lot of stuff about Col. Parker being responsible for a lot of what happened to Elvis and kind of literally making him a vampire in some ways, you know? A kind of a blood sucker… It plays on a lot of things, this movie, in a great way and it’s got Sitting Bull in it and there’s a peyote trip in it that is amazing and it’s just a big leap beyond the other movie. It’s ten times more insane and bizarre and it’s great and hilarious, too. It’s funnier than the other one is even. It still ends up being this great character study of this Elvis guy."
Nosferatu, unfortunately, takes a cue from Iron Man 2 in replacing cast members. In Bubba Ho-Tep, Bruce Campbell delivered a memorable turn as an aging Elvis Pressley forced to battle supernatural evils. The actor, however, didn’t want to return for a sequel.
"I’m not sure what his reasons were particularly," Giamatti says. "I think he’s doing a lot of his own stuff now like directing stuff on his own and he just wants to do that, I guess. It was a disappointment and we really tried and then after a while it was like ‘Now we are just going to start pissing the guy off! He’s being totally cool about it, I mean, but I don’t want to piss the guy off.’"
Giamatti first got involved in the project the old fashioned way: fandom.
"I saw Bubba Ho-Tep and it’s one of my favorite movies,’ says Giamatti. "I loved it and then somebody finally showed [Coscarelli] some interview in which I said that and he called me up."
Giamatti, who will help produce the film with his company Touchy Feely Productions, says that Bubba Nosferatu will hopefully begin shooting in Spring of 2009, when Perlman’s schedule opens up.
