New Dracula Movie in the Works with Jennifer's Body Director Karyn Kusama
A new take on an iconic blood-sucker is coming to the big screen.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Blumhouse Productions — the studio that found recent box office success with its classic monster update The Invisible Man — is exploring a modern reimagining of Dracula. Karyn Kusama (Destroyer, Jennifer’s Body) is currently set to direct the project.
Though Bram Stoker’s 19th-century Dracula story is now in the public domain, sources told THR that the movie will likely end up with Universal Studios as it reboots its pantheon of monster-movie characters.
The last Dracula movie to hit theaters was Dracula Untold in 2014, with Luke Evans in the starring role.
Kusama, 51, last directed Nicole Kidman in 2018’s Destroyer, a gritty cop drama that nabbed the actress a Golden Globe nomination for her transformative performance. The director also brought moviegoers the Megan Fox–led Jennifer’s Body back in 2009 and thriller The Invitation in 2015.
Blumhouse Productions is known for turning low-budget genre films into financial hits, with notable credits to its backlog like 2009’s Paranormal Activity and 2017’s Get Out.
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Katie Jones/Variety/Shutterstock Karyn Kusama and Nicole Kidman, Nov. 2018
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In a 2018 interview with Polygon, Kusama reflected on being branded a “horror director.”
“It’s funny, you make two horror movies, or movies that could be construed as horror, and now you’re called a horror director,” she joked at the time. “I think it’s just that overwhelming desire for society to organize itself around labels and categories. I don’t actively resist being called a horror director, because I do love elements of horror. I think that is pretty clear.”
The filmmaker explained that she never wants to be confined to one genre, and wants to tell stories through whichever avenue best suits the themes.
“There are so many kinds of stories I want to explore that, I think, are about investigating our limited capacity for change, how we work with that challenge,” she said. “And if that gets expressed through horror, so be it. But certainly, I think genre as a whole remains an interesting place to work, because it’s a transporter of so many ideas and themes and metaphors within more familiar storylines.”
