Winning a pair of Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director would typically open the floodgates to even more prestige pictures, but Chloé Zhao has decided the best course of action that comes with nabbing two of the most prestigious trophies in the industry is to get weird.
While her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut didn’t exactly go according to plan after Eternals was blighted by the pandemic, under-performed at the box office, and gained the unwanted distinction of being both the franchise’s first Rotten installment and its worst-reviewed entry ever, there’s no denying it keeps getting more popular over time.
Somehow deigning to take an even bigger swing, the filmmaker has been working on a futuristic sci-fi Western spin on Dracula, which would at least differentiate it from the Count’s many adventures we seem to be swamped with on an annual basis. That being said, Zhao did claim to Variety that the story is going to be rooted in real science.
“We’re talking about immortality. It’s one of the greatest topics of science. [Nobel Prize winner Jennifer A. Doudna] discovered the technology for genome editing. We want to examine immortality in a more present-day way because everyone wants to live forever. Every Friday – it started during the pandemic – I spend two or three hours with someone from some field of science. I think it’s so important because they get you to look at the world from a different perspective.”
Nothing screams “scientific accuracy” like a far-flung vampire thriller that draws inspiration from the likes of Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone, especially with rumors abounding that the idiosyncratic and lovably eccentric Robert Pattinson is being eyed for the lead role. Whatever shape it ends up taking, Zhao’s Dracula is guaranteed to be a hell of a picture.