Nicolas Cage has been speaking to Total Film about how he feels he was always destined to play Dracula, and where he would like to take the character if he got the chance to play him again. Cage will soon be seen alongside Nicholas Hoult in comedy vampire movie Renfield, with Awkwafina and Ben Schwartz in support.
“The concept of Dracula, in itself, is a challenge,” muses Nicolas Cage in the latest issue of Total Film magazine(opens in new tab), which features Renfield on the cover. “It’s been done so many times already. It’s been done very well and it’s also been done not very well.”
“I certainly admire Christopher Lee and Frank Langella and Bela Lugosi and Gary [Oldman]. But I wanted to see if I could bring something fresh to the character. And I also kind of always knew I had to do it at some point.” Cage says he based his version of Dracula on a combination of Lee, and his own father – August Coppola. Cage’s uncle Francis of course directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992.
Cage continued; “It’s really about the psyche of the character. An addiction to blood is not unlike an addiction to alcohol or heroin or sex, so I thought about how that lust can drive someone into darker dimensions. You know, there are some minor moments here where you get to see some of the pathos in Dracula’s eyes… and that made me think that maybe one day I might like to try for a whole movie where you’re really understanding the psyche of the character. I didn’t really have the time to delve into that here.”
Renfield is a result of Universal letting go of their ‘Dark Universe’ idea (which was set to star Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem and Russell Crowe). Instead, they’ve gone down the route of letting indie movie directors such as Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man) and Derek Cianfrance (Wolfman) have a go at their roster of classic horror characters.
Check out our guide to the best monster movies.