The movie business may be unpredictable at the best of times, but one thing you can always rely on is that there’s always going to be at least one in-development Dracula project. That’s actually selling it a little short, when a veritable bounty of movies based on the iconic vampire and his associated lore are currently in the works.
At the moment, we have Last Voyage of the Demeter coming in January 2023, Nicholas Hoult playing the title character in offbeat violent comedy Renfield focusing on the bloodsucker’s faithful familiar, The Bride approaches the story from the point of view of a female protagonist, Karyn Kusama is handing a modern-day adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel, while Overlord‘s Julius Avery is rebooting Van Helsing.
However, the wildest of the lot is whatever Chloé Zhao is plotting, with the two-time Academy Award winner and Eternals director in the early stages of her futuristic sci-fi Western spin on Dracula, which sounds positively insane. During a recent interview with SlashFilm, the filmmaker teased what drew her to the project.
“Let’s just say I am not leaving the immortality sandbox anytime soon. I’ve always been fascinated by vampires and the concept of the Other they embody. I’m very excited to work with Donna [Langley], Peter [Cramer], and the team at Universal to re-imagine such a beloved character.”
Zhao will write, direct and produce the high concept Dracula effort, cementing her full-on dive into broad genre territory after following up The Rider and Nomadland with Eternals and whatever her contribution to vampiric cinema turns out to be.