Dracula Untold is the new title for Universal Pictures’ upcoming project, formerly known as Dracula: Year Zero. This is the second big announcement from the studio this week, after yesterday’s news concerning the new name and release date for Jurassic Park 4, which is now called Jurassic World.
Dracula Untold stars Luke Evans, Sarah Gadon, Dominic Cooper, Zach McGowan, Samantha Barks, Thor Kristjansson and Art Parkinson. It tells the origin story of Dracula, combining vampire mythology with the true history of Prince Vlad the Impaler. For those who don’t know, Vlad was the historical figure who inspired Bram Stoker’s iconic character.
In a recent interview, Evans told Coming Soon the following:
“[Don’t think] of the Dracula that Bram Stoker created. The Dracula that I’m going to be portraying is the origin of Dracula. It’s about the man that became Dracula. Don’t be too quick to think he’s a bad guy. I’m just going to say that.”
Actually, this is not the only news about Dracula in recent weeks. Last month it was reported that Legendary Pictures is considering co-financing the project. This would be part of their new deal with Universal Pictures, which came about after they broke off their eight-year relationship with Warner Bros.
Being involved in the project isn’t a bad idea for Legendary Pictures, as they appear to be quite adept at handling origin stories. The studio helped bring both Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel to theaters. The fact is that origin stories provide a fertile ground for franchises to grow. In the last decade we have seen Batman, Superman and James Bond reborn, and all of them have done extremely well.
Dracula Untold is now in production and will hit theaters on October 3rd, 2014.
