Dracula

Drac fights back in a new Netflix miniseries.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula revolutionized the portrayal of vampires in popular culture forever, rebranding a central European legend into a scary, fascinating, unforgettable character that still haunts the public consciousness. And like any popular character, Dracula has gotten his fair share of speculative origin stories, from novels like Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian to movies like Dracula Untold. Now, for the first time, the first Stoker-authorized Dracula origin tale, titled Dracul, is getting a film adaptation, and it might be directed by It’s Andres Muschietti.

If you thought Sherlock liked his long coats and high collars, just wait until you meet Steven Moffat’s Dracula. The team behind Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman’s beloved detective drama has set their sights on one of horror’s most enduring icons, and in a familiar format.

A new report suggests that the studio has considered going in an exciting new direction with their planned reboot of The Mummy. Specifically, this mummy might be a mommy!

The likes of Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man have no business aping the Marvel “shared universe” structure in the first place. They're monsters! Let them monster! Any of our well-intentioned blogging-into-the-wind was too little, too late because the head of Universal has pretty much come and out said that they're taking the horror out of their horror icons.

Few cinematic legacies are as strong as that of the Universal Monsters, whose films have spent the past 80 years aging from B-movies into genre masterpieces. These aren't just movies; they're the foundation of an entire genre, the roots of an entire cinematic language. These aren't just great movies -- they're vital components of human culture, touchstones whose reverberations can still be felt today. And Universal has no idea what to do with them.

It’s easy to find Halloween movies. A cursory Google-search yields a slew of time-honored terror, vetted by thousands of critics and fans. But for those weak-stomached folks who avoid horror flicks at all costs, this bounty of murder porn, slasher flicks, and Romero rip-offs are highway to bad dream city. There are, of course, plenty of happy Halloween movies that are safe for the squeamish. They just take a bit more effort than a Google search to uncover.

While it's true that great stretches of Stoker's novel have been explored, transformed and extended by countless filmmakers over the years until every surprise feels like a cliche, there's one stretch of the story that feels fresher than ever. Upon a recent revisit to the novel, it was this portion of the book that most ignited the imagination and felt the most inherently cinematic. And yet, it's the portion of the book that gets overlooked in even the most faithful adaptations.

'Dracula Untold' is looking to do to the world's most famous vampire what 'Batman Begins' did for The Dark Knight. This doesn't just look like a simple origin story, which could be a good thing! Or it could be a bad thing! What we do know is that Luke Evans is inspired casting as Dracula himself and that a new series of fresh videos arrived to let you start pre-judging this film as you see fit.

Few movie studios have a legacy as clearly defined by horror movies as Universal, who made their name in the early days of cinema with films like 'Dracula,' 'Frankenstein,' 'The Wolfman' and 'The Mummy.' And no one seems to be more aware of the importance those icons have than the studio itself. Why else would they be launching a massive campaign to revive their classic monsters in a series of films over the next few years?