Perlman Replaces Campbell as Elvis in Bubba Nosferatu

You may or may not have heard that Don Coscarelli has been trying to get a sequel to his surprise indie hit “Bubba Ho-Tep” made for a while now. This time, instead of mummies, an aging Elvis (originally played by Bruce Campbell in a retirement home, no less) will be taking on vampires. Campbell, it was revealed, had passed on the sequel, but that hasn’t stopped Coscarelli and Paul Giamatti, who had signed on a while back to play Colonel Parker, Elvis’ manager in the sequel. Now, from Giamatti himself, comes news that “Hellboy” star Ron Perlman will be slipping on Elvis’ jumpsuit for the sequel.

The news comes from AICN:

So then [Don Coscarelli] asked me if I was interested in doing this one and I was just like “You have got to be kidding me. Yeah, absolutely!” I said, “I have a little production company and we can help you guys do this” and he brought me in onboard and now we have got Ron Perlman interested in playing Elvis.

On why Campbell won’t return as Elvis:

Every effort was made by us, he just didn’t want to do it and he was cool about it. He just didn’t want to do it, which is a bummer, because part of the reason I love that movie is him… a big part of it. He’s fantastic and I’ve always loved him. I’m a big fan of his, but he didn’t want to do it, which is totally cool.

More about his role and the sequel’s plot:

So yeah I’ll be playing Col. Parker, who… You know part of the great thing about this is not only are these wonderful genre movies, but he’s actually taking a weird, interesting take on the whole Elvis myth and kind of investigating the whole Elvis myth in a really interesting way, 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.

Col. Parker is a completely bizarre, shadowy weird figure. He’s like something out of a horror movie or something. Nobody really knows much about him and I didn’t even know that he was Dutch! He’s not American! He’s this sort of quintessential American huckster character and he’s not American! He’s Dutch! He escaped the Nazis and it’s just completely bizarre. So it has this larger than life, grotesque weird lovely thing going on anyway and that Elvis was obsessed with astrology and the occult and all of this stuff. It just makes so much sense, these movies. It’s great.

They then spend the next three or four pages drooling over Don Coscarelli. It’s all very weird and kind of embarrasing, but you get the important points: Campbell is out and Perlman is in, and “Bubba Nosferatu” is coming to town.

Below: If that ain’t vampire fighting gear, I don’t know what is.