Coming off an Emmy win and a succession of dues-paying mainstream offerings, Paul Giamatti has clearly earned enough clout to call his next shot the way he wants it. And while some guys would just just wander off to make the "most awful movie they can find," Giamatti has his heart set on a surefire American classic: Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She Vampires.The film would cap a dream dating all the way back to 2002, when Giamatti stumbled upon the cult hit Bubba Ho-Tep in a New York art house, submitting his sizable imagination to the story of an over-the-hill Elvis (Bruce Campbell in the role of his life), a black JFK, and their joint battle against a mummy cowboy in the nursing-home showdown of the century. As Vanity Fair notes today, the closing credits jokily promised a sequel, but the overwhelmed Giamatti wasn't letting Campbell or director Don Coscarelli off the hook. There would be a Bubba franchise, and Paul Giamatti would kick-start it to life, attaching himself as Elvis's doomed manager Col. Tom Parker:

I really think movies like this are so much more insightful about Elvis and the myth of Elvis than any bio-pic could ever be. Anyway, it also explores his relationship with Colonel Parker, his Svengali-like manager who controlled so much of Elvis’ career. It’s about how the Colonel cons him into doing one more movie, and then they get involved with vampires and the Colonel literally ends up selling his soul to the devil. There’s also a character who thinks he is or may actually be Sitting Bull. And there are peyote trips and all sorts of weird, supernatural things. It’s such a great script.

And "hot female vampires," naturally, just in case an Oscar-nominated sidekick isn't enough nudge this closer to a green light in a skittish financing climate. Giamatti isn't worried at all, he adds: "We’ll definitely get Bubba Nosferatu made. It’s just a question of when and where." This is probably where that Manoj connection would be best utilized; that guy craps money, and God knows he owes Giamatti at least 15 million favors after Lady in the Water.