'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' star Anthony Mackie: Our movie will be educational

It was a bestselling book that's now a highly anticipated movie, but can "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," a story that has the 16th president exacting revenge on the vampires who killed members of his family, also be a teaching tool?

Anthony Mackie, who stars in next year's Fox film opposite Benjamin Walker, says the tale will contain plenty of nutritional value. "It's not so much fictional as it is a recontextualization of history," Mackie, who plays Lincoln valet and friend William Johnson, told 24 Frames. "There are actual moments and things that happened in the annals of time. Abraham Lincoln's friend William Johnson really was a freed man of color."

Like Seth Grahame-Smith's book, the movie -- which will be directed by Timur Bekmambetov and produced by Tim Burton --  assumes the existence of vampires in the 19th century as the nation was on the brink of Civil War. As the story progresses, we learn that the creatures have a sinister investment in keeping slavery legal. Lincoln's personal animus toward the vampires for what they did to his family drives him to hunt them down, a crusade he continues even from the White House as he pursues an abolitionist agenda.