As we noted last week, the new Universal Monsters movie Renfield is now filming in New Orleans – a fact that the Official Universal Monsters Instagram account celebrated by sharing an image of the clapperboard being used on set, revealing that Renfield has a logo that matches the font used on a classic poster for the 1931 Dracula (watch it HERE)! Both the Renfield clapperboard and the Dracula poster can be seen below.
Based on a treatment written by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, Renfield is being directed by Chris McKay (The Tomorrow War) 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.
Kirkman has said Renfield is “a story about him being Dracula’s henchman and how shitty a job that is.” In this film, he 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.
The film stars Nicholas Hoult as the title character Renfield, Nicolas Cage as Dracula, Awkwafina as traffic cop Rebecca Quincy, Adrian Martinez as her traffic cop partner Chris, Shohreh Aghdashloo as a feared crime lord named Ella, and Ben Schwartz in an unspecified role.
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.
What do you think of the Renfield logo?