Stallone insists he’s still very much involved in plans to make a Poe movie, which he has written – but he accepts the idea of him directing and starring in the film has become a “big parody”, and he’s glad the project never got off the ground with him as the author.
He explains, “I do have a script that’s gone through 20 mutations. Every few years I take it out and rework it and update it.
“What fascinates me about Poe is that he was such an iconoclast. It’s a story for every young man or woman who sees themselves as a bit outside the box, or has been ostracised during their life as an oddball or too eccentric. It didn’t work for him either.
“His work was too hip for the room… but he developed the modern mystery story. He was also one of the great cryptologists; there were very few codes he couldn’t crack. He was just an extraordinary guy.”
Asked if he still wanted to play Poe, Stallone tells Cigar Aficionado magazine, “I did at one time. Thank God that never happened.”
