Renfield director says Nicolas Cage Dracula movie has action, heart, and menace

Nicolas Cage plays Dracula in the upcoming Universal Monsters movie Renfield, which is set to reach theatres on April 14, 2023, and he has said that the voice he used for the character is a mixture of a Mid-Atlantic accent with some Sir Christopher Lee and a bit of Anne Bancroft. The film’s director Chris McKay (The Tomorrow War) has reiterated that Anne Bancroft was a source of inspiration in a new interview with Empire magazine (with thanks to Syfy Wire for the transcription). McKay told Empire that he and Cage “talked a lot about silent acting. Things like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, making shapes with his body. You’re gonna see allusions to Nosferatu, all the way to Anne Bancroft in The Graduate.” McKay said that this modern story, which presents Dracula as a “shitty boss” to the titular character, is “far away from what you would typically think of a Dracula movie“. The film has a comedic element that makes it something along the lines of An American Werewolf in London, Evil Dead II, and Shaun of the Dead. “But it’s also got action, it’s got a lot of heart, it’s not without menace…“

Based on a treatment written by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, Renfield was directed by McKay from a screenplay by Ryan Ridley (Rick and Morty). In Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, 

R.M. Renfield was an inmate at a lunatic asylum who was thought to be suffering from delusions but actually is a servant of Dracula. Plot details of the movie weren’t announced, but it’s believed to take place during the present day and is not a period piece.

In this film, Renfield has been serving the bloodsucker for centuries, and now he

has grown sick and tired of his centuries as Dracula’s lackey. The henchman finds a new lease on life life and maybe even redemption when he falls for feisty, perennially angry traffic cop Rebecca Quincy.

Renfield is played by Nicholas Hoult. Cage and Hoult are joined in the cast by Awkwafina as traffic cop Rebecca Quincy, Adrian Martinez as her traffic cop partner Chris, Shohreh Aghdashloo as a feared crime lord named Ella, Bess Rous as “people in toxic relationships” support group member Caitlyn, and James Moses Black and Ben Schwartz in unspecified roles.

While Universal is developing several monster projects, they were excited to get Renfield into production first. According to Deadline, the story’s “mix of humor and action was something the studio was looking for because so many of the other properties have more of a horror element to them.” 

Kirkman, who has described the film as “a violent comedy”, is producing Renfield with David Alpert, Bryan Furst, and Sean Furst of Skybound Entertainment, alongside McKay’s producing partner Samantha Nisenboim.

Are you looking forward to Renfield and its mixture of action, heart, and menace? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.