Movies
Dracula’s Henchman ‘Renfield’ Getting His Own Film at Universal
Universal Pictures’ newly retooled Dark Universe is taking an interesting turn. Instead of focusing on one of their famous Universal Monsters, they’re focusing on a henchman, Dracula’s to be precise.
Rocketman director Dexter Fletcher is attached to direct Renfield, a monster movie centered on Dracula’s henchman and based on an original pitch from “The Walking Dead’s” Robert Kirkman, writes Variety.
In the original “Dracula” novel, R.M. Renfield was an insect-eating inmate at a lunatic asylum who was thought to be suffering from delusions, but was actually a servant of Dracula. Plot details are currently unknown, though it’s believed to take place during the present day and is not a period piece.
Guaranteeing both horror and grounded sci-fi weirdness, the screenplay is being penned by “Rick and Morty” scribe Ryan Ridley.
After cutting the cord on their shared Dark Universe plans, Universal aligned with Blumhouse on Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, which debuts in 2020, while Paul Feig is currently developing a monster movie with the studio. And Universal is also meeting with directors for a new take on “Frankenstein” that James Wan (Aquaman, Saw, The Conjuring, Insidious) is producing.
On a related note, Kirkman had been developing a remake of An American Werewolf in London for the past few years.
Abigail Cowen (“Stranger Things,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” The Ritual) will lead the cast of psychedelic horror movie The Guide, Deadline reports this week.
James Badge Dale (13 Hours) and Edouard Philipponnat (Napoleon) will also star. Inon Shampanier directs from a script co-written with Natalie Shampanier.
Deadline details, “Abigail Cowen will play a young woman who enters a psilocybin mushroom retreat in an effort to heal past traumas, surrendering herself to the care of a psychedelic therapy guide (James Badge Dale). As the guide’s motives come under suspicion, the past bleeds into the present and the session unravels into a psychedelic nightmare.”
“This psychedelic therapy thriller is designed to be a visceral inward journey, and I am thrilled to go on this journey with the incredibly talented James Badge Dale, Abigail Cowen and Edouard Philipponnat,” Inon Shampanier said in a statement to Deadline.
Stay tuned for more on The Guide as we learn it.
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