Clyde has found his new partner in crime. True Blood co-star Lindsay Pulsipher, who plays were-panther Crystal Norris Stackhouse on HBO’s hit vampire soap opera, has been tapped to star as Bonnie Parker in writer-director Tonya S. Holly’s The Story if Bonnie and Clyde, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The actress currently is putting the finishing touches on The Hatfields and McCoys, a mini-series she’s filming with Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton for the History Channel. Pulsipher also has the drama Meth Head, starring Lukas Haas, due out sometime before the end of the year.

As for Bonnie, Pulsipher replaces Hilary Duff, who was released from the production – and paid handsomely for her troubles – after her pregnancy interfered with the production’s tightening schedule. So Holly cast another pretty blonde opposite Kevin Zegers (Gossip Girl, The Jane Austen Book Club), who has been cast as Clyde in the production.

No matter who’s cast, they’ll have massive shoes to fill. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway created, and then shattered, the templates on how best to play the infamous bank robbing couple, and it will be impossible not to think of their meticulous performances in Arthur Penn’s romanticized masterpiece while watching younger, inexperienced actors trying to forge through a remake. Part of me wished the scheduling conflicts with Duff would force Cyprus Moon Studios to put this idea on a shelf, but they seem intent on following through. I don’t know enough about Pulsipher or Zegers to say whether or not they’ll be able to carry this production – which co-stars Taryn Manning and Cloris Leachman – so we’ll just have to wait until Bonnie and Clyde ride again in 2012 to see for ourselves.