Melanie has added some new captures of Mary as Jessica Bennett when she was on the soap opera, “Passions”. Be sure to check out the new caps in the gallery.

Despite debuting #3 at the U.S. box office, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has taken first place across the pond in the U.K.

Here’s the scoop from Flickering Myth:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter debuted in first place at the UK box office, although its opening haul of £1,119,117 is far from spectacular, especially considering it benefited from two days of preview screenings, without which the Timur Bekmambetov action-fantasy would have found itself languishing in fifth.

Here are their top 5 opening films from the box office:

1. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, £1,119,117 weekend (New)
2. Men in Black III, £1,072,033 weekend; £19,062,351 total (5 weeks)
3. The Five-Year Engagement, £1,058,897 weekend (New)
4. Prometheus, £1,029,758 weekend; £21,641,986 total (4 weeks)
5. Snow White and the Huntsman, £870,402 weekend; £13,413,970 total (4 weeks)

This news really isn’t surprising to me, but Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has come in #3 at the office, making $16.5 million its opening weekend. The top 5 films this weekend were:

Here’s what THR wrote about the film:

Managing only a third-place finish was 20th Century Fox’s 3D genre epic Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The R-rated film, playing like a horror pic, grossed a soft $16.5 million in its opening. Fox had predicted a debut in the $15 million range, but box office observers believed the film could get to $20 million.

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov and featuring Tim Burton in the producer’s seat, Abraham Lincoln received a C+ CinemaScore.

Abraham Lincoln, costing $68 million to produce, features the storied U.S. president as a vampire hunter and is based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote the adapted screenplay. The film is an important test for the “mash-up” genre, with Lionsgate queued up to make the film adaptation of Grahame-Smith’s book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Fox believes the film, which skewed male, will have good legs.

“Audiences will continue to seek out Timur’s daring and brilliant vision of Abraham Lincoln,” Fox’s incoming president of domestic distribution Chris Aronson said.

In a new interview with Film School Rejects, Mary talks about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the appreciation fans have for Scott Pilgrim Vs the World and her role in Roman Coppola’s A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III. As always, posting a few snippets on here, but click the link above tor read the full interview:

So, when you read a passage detailing a vampire throwing a horse, is that the sign-me-up moment?

Oh my God, that scene is insane [Laughs]. Most of those scenes I had no concept of what they were going to look like, since I wasn’t even there when they were shooting them. I was blown away when I saw that for the first time. You do think, “I have no idea how they’re going to do that and I have no idea how that’s going to look,” but that’s kind of exciting. There’s a mystery factor to it.

You do have the makeup challenge, though. To what degree do you have to readjust how you act?

You do have to do that a little bit. It’s harder to be expressive, because you got so much stuff on your face it can be hard to make facial expressions. That’s a bit of a challenge. At the same time, it added so much for me, because I didn’t know how I was going to play someone about 20 years older than me. As soon as they put the aging makeup on, it became easier and made more sense. Naturally it just became easier.

Roman Coppola made A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III sound pretty surreal. How do you describe that movie?

It’s basically about this man going through a bit of a crisis, and it’s shown through his perspective and what’s going on in his head. He’s quite imaginative. It takes place in the 70s, but it’s highly-influenced by 1930s musicals. There’s a lot of musical numbers, fantastical set pieces, and things like that. It’s very whimsical and sweet.

Did all that call for a more heightened performance?

Well, it’s always different, and it depends on what it is. This one was so heightened that you had to go over the top and have fun with it. I’m in a fantasy sequence where I play this dominatrix military type of office, calling out commands to other women. In his head, that’s what he thinks women are like when men aren’t around. Of course, he’s totally wrong and it’s totally ridiculous. You just have to go with it and chew the scenery.

Mary and her Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter co-star Benjamin Walker will be appearing on MTV’s “10 0n Top” this Saturday morning, June 23, scheduled to air at 11:30 am ET on MTV. Be sure to check your local listings. We’ll keep you guys posted & hopefully the video will be online shortly after it airs! Photos will likely be up by tomorrow.

Two new interviews featuring Mary have come online where she talks about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Here’s part of the first one with Vulture.com:

Her relationship with Abe is so chaste. They never sexualize your character. Was there talk of ever trying to make it steamier to appeal to a certain kind of audience?

Definitely not. I think their relationship wouldn’t have made sense. I think they were very much in love, but he was also very distant in a lot of ways because of this other life that he was leading, and that was true of their relationship in real life. He’s very distant because of his political ambitions and she wanted to be very involved, and she was, but there was always a kind of wall between them because they both had their emotional issues. They had a lot of ups and downs.

I feel like with movies or TV shows where the wife is married to someone with a secret life, some viewers tend to turn on the wife because they feel like she’s clueless.
Totally.

Which is so unfair, but I can see how it happens. Did you feel that might happen with your character?
From my perspective and Timur’s perspective, she knew a lot more than she was really letting on. She just wanted him to be the person to come tell her what was really happening instead of going up and accusing him of this and that. And when he finally does, she’s like, I’ve known about this forever, I’ve just been waiting for you to have the balls to come and say it to me. So I didn’t really feel like I was the clueless, oblivious wife. I think it was more complex than that.

Also, here’s some of her interview with Hollywood.com

“The more I learned about her [while researching], the more I wanted to bring as much truth to her as possible, and I feel like she’s represented in the film in a realistic way to how she really was. I expected to read about her and for her to be wildly different from the way she was in the script, but I was surprised to find that it actually all matched up really well,” Winstead explained.

Mary also said that Smashed will be out sometime in September or October. A release date has yet to be announced.

With AL:VH being released into theaters this weekend, new interviews have come online with Mary discussing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. First, here’s some of her interview with Screen Crush. Click the link to read the full interview:

How much did you know about Mary Todd Lincoln prior coming onto this project?

I knew a little bit but probably not any more than what you hear in grade school and what you hear just sort of casually. So what I knew the most about her was that she was the one first lady who ended up institutionalized and she seems to be regarded as having been somewhat crazy. So I was very curious to know if she was going to be portrayed that way in the script and how that was going to be handled. And it wasn’t really touched on so much. When I researched her more I realized that there is so much more to her than that and that the way she was portrayed in the script was pretty accurate for who she was for the majority of her life.

Was there anything you learned about her and her relationship to Lincoln that really surprised you?

There were a lot of surprises. I was surprised to learn that she actually was, in real life, engaged to Stephen Douglas (played by Alan Tudyk in the film) which I thought was something they just created for the film because it seemed so convenient for his political rival to have been her former fiancé. But that was actually completely true. And she really dumped him, this guy who had money and status and all of that, for Abraham Lincoln who at the time was a poor lawyer who didn’t have anything to his name. So, that to me said a lot about her and really made me want to know more about who she was. And their relationship was really fascinating. I mean they were both kind of emotionally troubled people in different ways but they were good for each other and I think that they had a really strong bond but it wasn’t always lighthearted. They definitely had a lot of really dark moments together and you can see some of that in the later years which I was glad got into the film.

And here’s a bit of her interview with RamaScreen:

RS: You got to shoot a vampire in this film, did you have any weapons training at all and what type of weapon did you use in that scene?

MEW: “It was a musket and I didn’t really have to do many training, I had like a little 5 minute training session with a guy on set who showed me how to use it, it was a lot of fun, I got to load it. It was cool, I didn’t want to put it down.”

Several positive reviews for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter have come online in anticipation for this weekend’s release. Here’s a couple of them. Of course, to read the full reviews, just click on any of the links.First up, The Playlist‘s review:

“Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter” is a proudly B movie, and as such sometimes favors empty spectacle over genuine cleverness. Sometimes you’ll wish the story delved slightly deeper into history, to make it resonate even more, and the ending of the movie, altered drastically from the novel (and not for the better), errs on the side of convention when it could have been slightly bolder. But these are minor quibbles with a picture that is surprisingly solid, a genuine treat in a summer filled with manufactured spectacle. The beautiful cinematography by Caleb Deschanel owes a considerable debt to the “pinhole” style that Roger Deakins used for “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” giving the center of the frame the most important spot and then slightly blurring the outer edge, like an old western photograph, a bold stylistic choice for a movie this expensive (and, it turns out, the right choice). Bekmambetov, Burton, and Grahame-Smith have created the rare historical-based fantasy that seems authentic enough to snuggle next to the real thing, anchored by the heartfelt and dynamic performance of Walker as Lincoln. His Honest Abe not only speaks with the eloquence and conviction we’ve come to understand from the history books, he fights with it too. [B+]

From Roger Ebert, who gave it 3/5 stars:

“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject — unless there is a sequel, which is unlikely, because at the end, the Lincolns are on their way to the theater. (You know what happens then.) It’s also a more entertaining movie than I remotely expected. What it achieves is a surprisingly good job of doing justice to its title, and treating Lincoln with as much gravity as we can expect, under the circumstances.

Read the full article »

Several videos of Mary featuring her and the cast talking about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter have come online. I’ve already capped some of the interviews, which can be viewed in the gallery. Other interviews still need to be capped, which will be done sometime in the week.

First, here’s a quick interview Mary did with VH1 on the red carpet:

Caps here:

Alloy Entertainment cast interview:

Caps from a recent Joblo.com interview can be seen here:

Given that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is two days away from opening in theaters, a ton of new interviews with Mary talking about the film have come online. First up, here’s a bit of Mary talking to CBM about seeing the film for the first time and the film’s aging process. Click the link to read the full interview:

A lot of actors talk about not liking to see themselves on the big screen — how does 3D affect that? Does it make the whole thing worse?

I haven’t seen it in 3D yet! Tomorrow night will be the first time I see it. I’m curious! I’m a little nervous, because I don’t know what to expect. And just the period-piece elements, too. I’m excited to see how that comes into play in 3D.

The make-up in this movie is really stunning, too; the aging effects on you and Benjamin look seamless. Though maybe I’m a little vain, but if some wiz make-up artists showed me what I’d look like in 20 years, I’d freak out a little.

Oh, I know! I’d like to hope that maybe there’ll be some magic potion by then.

You still look gorgeous, though, which is kind of annoying.

[laughs] I was thinking, if this is the best-case scenario, if I don’t end up gaining 50 pounds by the time I’m that age … because you never know what’s going to happen! So it was like the best-case scenario to me. If all that happens is I get some crow’s feet and some wrinkles through here [points to sides of mouth], I can handle that.

Lucky Magazine also caught up with Mary to talk about ALVH and discuss fashion:

What exactly drew you to the part of Mary Todd?

Well, initially when I read the script, I wasn’t really sure to expect—just from the title! But I was pleasantly surprised about how real all the characters felt. And the character of Mary Todd was written in a way that was very strong, very take-charge—not at all the sort of passive, “token female” role you see sometimes.

Heading into the project, did you know much about Mary Todd’s life?

All i really knew about her was that she ended up being institutionalized when she was older, and I knew that during her time as First Lady, she was talked about for having a lot of breakdowns. So from what I knew, she was kind of a crazy person. But then the more I read about her, the more I learned that was only really true in her final years. There was a lot more to her than that.