You might have thought that, with Twilight’s last gleaming this year, vampire films were ready to head back into their coffins for a nap. But no! Hollywood has no plans to let them rest, and the pimp daddy of bloodsuckers, Dracula himself, is the subject of more than one movie stalking through the haunted halls of development. Now Sony thinks that what the word really needs is another take on the toothy terror.
The studio has nabbed a pitch from **Machine Gun Preacher / Mirror Mirror **writer Jason Kelly that will apparently tell yet another tale about Dracula’s origins. There are few details floating around at the moment, but according to Deadline it’s a period piece and, if successful, will be set as the launching point for a new franchise. Veteran producer Joe Roth is attached to lock in the requisite directing and acting types.
It’ll have more than a little competition: Universal recently revived Dracula: Year Zero with Gary Shore directing, Guillermo del Toro is looking to get a version of his Strain novels (co-written with Chuck Hogan) to the screen. And then there’s fellow novel adaptation The Passage, which finds Matt Reeves back in vamp territory for a tale of government experiments gone badly wrong. That’s without mentioning all the non-Drac-specific vampire stories floating around looking to bite.
So we could be in for yet another filmic arms race, with various studios looking to get their re-invented story out ahead of the rest of the Drac pack…