David Slade has a thing for vampires.
The Hollywood Reporter say the 30 Days of Night & Twilight: Eclipse director has struck a deal to helm
The Last Voyage of the Demeter, a new take on Dracula that is wholly centered around the mid-chapter of Bram Stoker's famous novel and the fate of the cargo ship passengers who are killed off one by one as The Count makes his journey from Transylvania to Whitby. The ship is titled the Demeter and I guess it's Alien but set on board a 19th century cargo ship that has to deal with treacherous seas and a blood sucking vampire. The Phoenix Pictures film already has two interesting thesps attached,
Noomi Rapace (loosely, as a boat stowaway) and
Ben Kingsley in some capacity, though we understand he isn't a Count Orloff esque bald Dracula. The hunt is on for the rest of the cast and if all the pieces come together it could shoot this year if Phoenix can drum up the required financing.
First time writer
Bragi Schut wrote the screenplay and it's already had many previous director's move through the project's revolving door including Robert Schwentke (Red, Flightplan),
Marcus Nispel (Friday the 13th, Pathfinder) and Austrian helmer Stefan Ruzowitzky (The Counterfeiters) - so hopefully Slade will stay with it to completion. Although we feel completely vamp'd out here at OWF and there's way too many Dracula movies in particular being scripted right now - we do like that this one is trying to do something a little different and the claustrophobic style horror, where Dracula is barely more than an anonymous figure, could be genuinely scary. Let's hope Napace & Kingsley stay attached and Slade can re-tap into the talent he showed in Hard Candy and isn't distracted by delivering a commercial project as he was with the Twilight saga.