Cameras are now rolling on director Luc Besson's (Leon, The Fifth Element) new take on Dracula, with his DogMan star Caleb Landry Jones on board to play the legendary Transylvanian Count.
The movie is titled Dracula: A Love Tale, and is described as a “a big-budget reimagining” of the vampire's origin story.
Deadline has shared a first look at the movie, giving us a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Jones in his armor, presumably as a pre-vampire Prince Vlad "The Impaler" Tepes.
“It’s a totally romantic approach,” Besson says of his adaptation. “There’s a romantic side in Bram Stoker’s book that hasn’t been explored that much. It’s a love story about a man who waits for 400 years for the reincarnation of his wife. That’s the true heart of the story, waiting an eternity for the return of love.”
To be fair, the romantic elements of the story have been explored several times in previous film and TV adaptations, most notably in Francis Ford Coppola's stylish Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Zoë Bleu will play Elisabeta and her 19th century alter ego, Mina, with Matilda De Angelis as Mina’s best friend, and Christoph Waltz as "a vampire-hunting priest who is on Dracula’s tail" (this movie's take on Van Helsing, no doubt).
This wouldn't be the first time we've seen Dracula's pre-vampire life depicted on screen. There's a flashback to the Count's early days in Coppola's film, and the more recent Dracula Untold focuses on the former Knight's fall into darkness after a fateful encounter with an ancient blood-sucker.
Jones played Banshee in X-Men: First Class, but the character was killed off prior to the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past. Memorable supporting roles in the likes of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Get Out, Finch and American Made.followed.
As for Besson, DogMan was viewed as something of a comeback for the controversial filmmaker, who made his name helming movies such as Big Blue, La Femme Nikita, Leon, and The Fifth Element. More recently, his career was impacted by sexual misconduct allegations, which included accusations from an actress who worked with the director on Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
Besson steadfastly denied these claims, however, and was cleared of all charges last year by France’s equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court.