Ethan Hawke is just finishing up The Coast of Utopia on Broadway. He plays an idealistic nobleman in 19th century Russia. That’s pretty much how I see Hawke, a guy who wants to do plays about Russian socialist leaders. It’s probably what he reads about and talks about in independent coffee shops with other guys wearing dirty $110 t-shirts and uncombed hair.

But Hawke has to pay the rent just like the rest of us, so he sometimes does movies and Monsters and Critics says he will be doing one about vampires. That’s quite a change from nine hour epics about Russian intellectuals, but Hawke likes to stretch himself, apparently. The movie is called Daybreakers and will begin filming in Australia, home of co-directors Peter and Michael Spierig, this summer.

Hawke will play a researcher in 2017 at a time when most of the world has been turned into blood suckers by a plague. I think the same thing happened in Europe in the 12th century, except in that case everyone just died. The vampires in Daybreak are running out of food as man becomes extinct, but alternatives may appear. This has a horror sounding feel to it and I don’t really see Hawke as the right guy for that, but he’s a good actor, so let’s wait and see.