Zac Efron as Abraham Lincoln
According to a news item that went up this week, actor Liam Neeson is no longer in the running to star in Steven Spielberg's as-yet-entirely-theoretical biopic about Abraham Lincoln. According to Neeson, his reasoning lies in Neeson being "past my sell-by date," which is to say that he's two years older than Lincoln was when he died.

It's a real shame (and it ignores the fact that Neeson looks about ten years younger than Honest Abe), but it does open up the field for a few new contenders to take the field to play our 16th President. So today, we've got a look at what it might look like if someone else was cast as Abe Lincoln! According to a news item that went up this week, actor Liam Neeson is no longer in the running to star in Steven Spielberg's as-yet-entirely-theoretical biopic about Abraham Lincoln. According to Neeson, his reasoning lies in Neeson's being "past my sell-by date," which is to say that he's two years older than Lincoln was when he died.

It's a real shame (and it ignores the fact that Neeson looks about 10 years younger than Honest Abe), but it does open up the field for a few new contenders to take the field to play our 16th president. So today, we've got a look at what it might look like if someone else was cast as Abe Lincoln.

If Neeson's age is the problem, then maybe they should go to the opposite end of the spectrum and do a film about Lincoln's high school days, where he campaigns for school president by putting on an abolitionist musical, all to win the hand of Mary Todd (Vanessa Hudgens).

Of course, if you're going to start fictionalizing Lincoln's life, why not go the extra mile and throw Michael Cera in there? He could play a Lincoln who wins his wife's hand in marriage by battling her Confederacy of Evil Exes: Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard and the mysterious General Robert E. Lee.

Naturally, Lee will be played by an orange '69 Charger driven by two moonshine-running good ol' boys who never mean no harm.


Now that he's no longer slated to play the Hulk, Edward Norton could make a pretty good run for Lincoln. While probably not as much fun to play, this role sharply reduces the necessity for Norton to set up an autograph table at Dragon*Con.

Of course, with Norton's penchant for more psychologically charged roles, producers might need to add an additional element to his story. Sure, there's the internal conflict over preserving the union and whether to end slavery, but audiences really respond to twist endings. So please, don't reveal the shocking secret of the Lincoln/Davis relationship to your friends.

Before he was a statesman, Lincoln was a talented wrestler; so you're going to want an Honest Abe who looks like he can beat the living crap out of somebody -- and if 'The Transporter' taught us anything at all -- it was that Jason Statham looks pretty good beating dudes up in a black suit.

Plus, the scene where he'd cover himself in oil and kung-fu fight a dozen confederate soldiers while simultaneously writing the Gettysburg Address? That's something we can all enjoy.


Yeah, yeah, we know: He doesn't quite look the part, but c'mon, the dude owns July 4th. And if you don't think a trailer where he picked up a stovepipe hat, looked at the camera and said "I make this look good" wouldn't get people into the theaters by the hundreds, then brother, you are wrong.

Plus, as an added bonus, you could totally get Alfonso Ribeiro as Vice President Andrew Johnson and Martin Lawrence as Secretary of State William H. Seward, who survived an assassination attempt on the same day as Abe's. History does not tell us if his reaction was a comedic "damn, Gina!" but we're willing to take poetic license on that one.