In a chat with director Breck Eisner about the upcoming DVD/Blu-ray release of The Crazies, B-D got a little more info from him on his next project, an adaptation of the Mark Wheatley Dracula-meets-Jack the Ripper comic book Blood of the Innocent, which had a four-issue run in 1985. He learned about the obscure comic book series from management/production company Circle of Confusion, who brought Wheatley, Eisner and writer Bill Marsilii together to collaborate on the project. Read on for more.
“‘Blood of the Innocent’ is a pitch I developed with Bill Marsilii, it’s a project we’re just going out with now, and it’s just at pitch stage” said Eisner. “But we’re gonna set it up and Marsilii will write the draft, and it’s an idea I’m just obsessed with it, I love it. So for the next horror-ish movie, that would be the next one that I would do. But you know, I say horror-ish because I love to combine genres in movies. I think that `The Crazies’ had a bit of Frankenstonian genre combinations, I really enjoy that. So that will be horror, and it will also be action, and it will kind of mystery kind of all rolled up into one.”

Eisner spoke excitedly about the project, which will be his next horror-adjacent film after vacating ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ (which fell apart following the writer’s strike) and turning down an offer to direct Cronenberg remake ‘The Brood’ (“I decided that’s not the one for me,” said the director): “It’s a really interesting world…they brought Dracula and Jack the Ripper together into one space. It had some really great ideas in it that we really expanded on to make this awesome, really fantastic pitch.”

Eisner is hoping that the pitch, based off a 25-page outline put together by Eisner and Marsilii, will soon be set up at a studio, at which time Marsilii can begin work on the full-length screenplay: “I’ve been so busy with the other stuff I’m doing that I really need to get out and pitch it and get it set up. But I’m hoping that by the end of summer we’ll have a script.“