According to ComingSoon, veteran B-movie director John Carpenter has been hired to direct Hilary Swank in an adaptation of the 2008 novel Fangland.  That’s right, Fangland, a “modern-day take on the Dracula story.”

The project has been in development for two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank to star as Evangeline Harker, a producer of a TV news magazine eerily similar to “60 Minutes.”  In the book, Harker is an employee of the legendary TV news magazine “The Hour.” Sent on assignment to Transylvania, she delivers more than a story when mysterious e-mails, coffins, and a creepy guy named Torgu descend on the New York office. [ComingSoon]

Time out.  Vampires are so overused that we had to turn them into platonic, monogamous vegetarians, and your plan for making that new again is setting it in the context of 60 Minutes, the only show on television broadcast to and from nursing homes?   Yes, I’m sure the kids will be web logging all over the Twitter about this one.  I think a more interesting idea would’ve been to shoot the whole thing from the point of view of an Andy Rooney-style unreliable narrator.  Well, not necessarily unreliably, but rambling and mostly senile.

“After I arrived at Torgu’s gothic castle, he descended the stairs wearing a top hat and a long black cape.  Aside from the swarthiness, he looked nice.  If you ask me, not enough young men wear capes these days.  Capes are nice.  Superheros wear capes.  It’s a sign of authority.  But why the underwear on the outside of the pants?  If you catch me with my underwear on the outside of my pants, it won’t be a fashion statement, I can tell you that.  Underwear are so expensive these days, it seems a shame to keep them hidden.  I had an illegitimate brother that my parents kept hidden.  We all did in those days.  Nowadays, parents will take any of their kids out to an Olive Garden or a Starbucks, but not Clubfoot Charlie.  Clubfoot Charlie ate rats in the attic and was happy for the privilege.  It seems like houses these days rarely have attics, and that’s a shame…”

It looks as if the makers of this poster for Amelia, the Amelia Airheart biopic starring Hilary Swank, wanted to create a strong, simple image of Amelia’s silhouette as she stared off into the distance, in the classic explorer pose.  But then at the last moment they didn’t quite trust their audience to know it was Amelia Earhardt, so they used the old just-slap-some-initials-on-her-back solution, a longtime favorite of political cartoonists.  Hold on, I think I can improve this one:

Eat your heart out, Perez Hilton.  On second thought… stop eating. [via FSR]

Every time I read Amelia, in my mind I hear Will Farrell shouting “Amelia!” like in Night at the Roxbury.  Haha, good story, Vince.  Anyway, this is the first trailer for Amelia, starring Hillary Swank as the aviatress who captured America’s heart by promising she could fly around the globe, only to fail miserably and die in the ocean, never to be found.  Ever since, women have been banned from flying, and for that we thank her.

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The New York Post is reporting* that Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry), who seems to gravitate to butch roles despite possessing what the scientists call "nice cans", has signed on to play aviatrix Amelia Earhardt.

Earhardt, of course, was the famous pilot who became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, but vanished over the Pacific in 1937 while trying to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.

Currently, little is known about the project.  Tentative title?  Girls Can’t Fly.