Tweet

I’ve been wondering for a while who was going to finally put the nail in the coffin (so to speak) on the current vampire trend. After all, it’s gone on just about long enough. Today, my silent rhetorical question was answered by Latino Review who, apart from listening to my thoughts, also has the scoop on a possible project over at Universal that sees them:

• Continue releasing classic monsters to moderns audiences;
• Giving Sam Worthington work; and
• Is hiring Alex Proyas to stare deep into the soul of Dracula with Dracula: Year Zero

Keep in mind that this is all scoop material, so it needs a grain of salt or two, but LR is consistent about being right when it comes to dirt.

So what does this all mean? It means conflict – because I’d love to see an honest-to-God Dracula movie, a flick that would find Vlad the Impaler being a wanton, violent tyrant, a film that would clean away all the pretense of the character in order to allow him to be as tortured and torturing as he needs to be.

But that most likely won’t happen. Still, I haven’t seen The Wolfman, so it’s possible that things get ugly.

The directing hire sounds solid to me if only because of my enduring loyalty to the man that gave us Dark City (I’m willfully forgetting Knowing and I, Robot), but casting Sam Worthington as Dracula is the biggest Transylvanian mistake since the time I ended up stealing those magic beans from that gypsy. Long story short: she followed me to a parking garage and shoved he whole face onto mine, dentures and all.

Horrible memories aside, this announcement is all sorts of good news and all sorts of bad. Glad to see a serious resurrection of the old monsters, but it seems like they could be done with far more care and talent.

What do you think?