Thanks to the success of Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, more classic movie monsters are dusting off their cobwebs and plotting their revenge on the big screen. One iconic character with a reboot in the works over at Blumhouse is Karyn Kusama’s Dracula, as announced back in March. The filmmaker has now broken her silence about the project with these words to sink our teeth into:
It’s a fairly faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel. That’s what I will say. It is using the idea of, I think something that gets overlooked with the adaptations of Dracula in the past is the idea of multiple voices and in fact, the book is filled with different points of view. The one point of view we don’t get access to and most adaptations give access to is Dracula himself. So, I would just say in some respect this is gonna be an adaptation called Dracula but it's perhaps not the same kind of romantic hero that we’ve seen in past adaptations of Dracula.
Are you blood thirsty for this version of Dracula yet? Karyn Kusama doesn’t give us a lot to go on here, but we have a much better picture of the approach the filmmaker is going to take with the project. The director told The Kingcast that the movie will be heavily guided by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel rather than a modern take or rewritten version of the character.
One particular detail Karyn Kusama is pulling from the Dracula book that other adaptations have not touched up is how Bram Stoker wrote it through multiple points of view. The Irish author switches the first person perspective throughout his novel, including through Mina Murray Harker, Jonathan Harker and Dr. Seward’s eyes.
Karyn Kusama did not reveal whether the movie will take place during its Gothic England roots or take place in a more modern setting, but we’d guess “faithful adaptation” means we’re going back in time with Dracula. It sounds like the concept could draw from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version that also closely resembles the source material.
If so, it will certainly set itself apart from the likes of modern adaptations of The Invisible Man and the in-the-works The Wolfman starring Ryan Gosling. Leigh Whannell’s recent dive into movie monsters through reinvention of the Invisible Man's origin story in a timely way scored $123 million worldwide, and the film reportedly cost just $7 million to make. The upcoming Wolfman will have the character’s alter ego be a news anchor and use Nightcrawler as a tonal reference point.
Karyn Kusama has impressed horror fans with her slow-burn 2016 indie The Invitation and previously with her cult favorite Jennifer’s Body. The filmmaker also directed the intense 2018 drama Destroyer, which resulted in a Golden Globe nomination for a completely unrecognizable Nicole Kidman.
Coming soon from Blumhouse is You Should Have Left starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried on demand this Friday, and Run Sweetheart Run is expected to hit Amazon Prime in the near future. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more news on Dracula and other exciting Blumhouse projects.
