Harry Potter to play Allen Ginsberg in new biopic

Daniel Radcliffe eyes role of Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings

Harry Potter star expected to swap potions for poetry in forthcoming John Krokidas thriller, in which he'll play beat poet

Xan Brooks
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 November 2011 16.33 GMT


Social networker ... Daniel Radcliffe replaces Jesse Eisenberg, who was originally tipped to play Ginsberg. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Daniel Radcliffe's frantic attempts to kill off Harry Potter continue apace. The 22-year-old actor is reportedly in talks to play Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings, an independent drama about poetry, gay stalkers and murder in 1940s New York.

The film is expected to chart the young Ginsberg's introduction to the Manhattan beat scene and his relationship with fellow writers Jack Kerouac and Lucien Carr. The latter was jailed for second-degree murder in 1944 after stabbing his stalker, David Kammerer, with a boy scout penknife and then dumping the body in the Hudson.

Kill Your Darlings will mark the feature debut of writer-director John Krokidas. It was initially set to be filmed in 2009 with Jesse Eisenberg playing Ginsberg, Chris Evans as Kerouac and Ben Whishaw as Carr.

Radcliffe, who pocketed a reported $40m fortune from the Harry Potter pictures, is currently acting on Broadway in a production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He will next be seen as a wide-eyed lawyer in the film adaptation of The Woman in Black, which is set for a February 2012 release in the US and UK. Ginsberg was last played on screen by James Franco, who starred in the 2010 drama Howl.