“ I didn’t want to partake in the massacre my childhood.” – Adi Shankar
Before Producer Adi Shankar saw his “Castlevania” adaptation realized as an adult-themed animated series on Netflix, it was being developed as a live-action film for years. Having already been behind Lionsgate’s excellent Dredd adaptation, Shankar has proved that his love for the source material is one of the reasons the film is fan success. In an interview with Comicbook, Shankar drops an absolute bomb, revealing that the reason he walked from the live-action project was because “Trevor Belmont had to be American and that Channing Tatum was [the] frontrunner.”
“As an example of how wrong this could have gone, I was approached in 2012 about making a live action Castlevania, by another group (to be clear, none of whom are involved in this Netflix version),” Shankar told the site. “I passed on that opportunity because I didn’t feel like that group wanted to make an authentic Castlevania movie and instead were making a movie titled ‘Castlevania’ to leverage off the ‘pre-existing brand awareness’ associated with the title.
“I was told, for example, that Trevor Belmont had to be American and that Channing Tatum was my frontrunner,” he added. “I walked away from what would have been a lucrative deal for me financially because I was a fan, because of my personal relationship with Castlevania, and because I didn’t want to partake in the massacre my childhood. The fact that fans of Castlevania love the show was our greatest victory and the fact that the show has expanded beyond that core audience and into general pop culture has been surreal.”
“Castlevania” is now streaming on Netflix with a second season already ordered by the streaming service.
