Bram Stoker's Dracula

Dracula rises for multiple new projects including Hammer film and Russell Crowe's Harker

By David Bentley on | From coventrytelegraph.net

FROM CRYPT to script, Dracula is coming back to our screens in a number of new projects that all seem to be arising at the same time.

Last month, it emerged that NBC was developing a Dracula drama series set in the 1890s. The TV soap opera was described as "young, sexy and supernatural" and as "Dangerous Liaisons meet The Tudors."

It's being scripted by Cole Haddon, who previously wrote Hyde, an as-yet-unmade project from 2010 in which Dr Jekyll is released from prison to hunt a new monster who seems to be using an improved version of the Hyde transformation serum.

In addition, Hammer CEO Simon Oakes has revealed that they are considering "a contemporary Dracula" movie and already had potential filmmakers in mind.

He told Digital Spy: "Certainly in my time with Hammer we will definitely do a Dracula.

"We can't really tell you much about it but we really are looking at it. I've been saying that we'd never remake the films per se, but we would do our own versions of it."

On top of that, New York Magazine's Vulture blog has just reported that Warner Bros is in talks with Russell Crowe to star in Harker, a reimagining of the Bram Stoker tale.

While the original story depicts Jonathan Harker as a lawyer who travels to Transylvania to help the Count find property in England, this project turns him into a Scotland Yard detective investigating the Count's murders in England.

Harker is written by Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy and will be directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who is free to commit to it while costs are reduced on his other film Akira.

Not to be outdone, Universal Pictures has now brought its Dracula Year Zero out of the coffin.

Sam Worthington had been set to star in the film, to be directed by Alex Proyas, but the studio put a stake in it over budget issues. Deadline reports that commercials maker Gary Shore is now set to helm the feature, from a reworked script by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless.

Proyas had left to direct Paradise Lost, a big-screen battle epic based on Milton's poem. But it was scrapped yesterday, when projected spending became too high to proceed.

Producer Mike De Luca, who is still involved with the resurrected Dracula Year Zero, had earlier explained that it combined the historical figure behind the story with the famous bloodsucker in the Bram Stoker novel.

It would, he said, chronicle the efforts of young prince Vlad of Transylvania to stop the invading Turks. In desperation he turns to the supernatural and becomes the legendary monster.

There's are other Dracula films in the pipeline, too, with Marcus Nispel previously attached to direct The Last Voyage of Demeter, about the ship on which the Count travelled to England. Adrien Brody was reported to be in line to play Dracula, and Val Kilmer was linked to the role of the ship's captain. David Slade replaced Nispel and, at present, Jude Law, Ben Kingsley and Noomi Rapace are in the cast.

Music video director Anthony Mandler was set to helm a project called Vlad, originally scripted by Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam and then reworked by Scott Kosar. It was said that this film would be entirely historical with none of the supernatural and fictional elements.

And Halloween filmmaker John Carpenter signed on to direct Fangland, a reimagining of the Dracula story based on a 2007 novel by John Marks. It sees New York TV producer Evangeline Harker travel to Transylvania for an interview with a European arms dealer who turns out to be a modern-day Dracula.