Hollywood Ink: Sam Worthington is Apparently Serious About Playing Dracula

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· Responding to a question once kicked around the Movieline HQ water cooler: Yes, Sam Worthington is a star. And he appears determined to push that distinction as far as it will go, with reports noting his near-attachment to the title role in Dracula Year Zero. According to those same reports, the story "seeks to depict Dracula as a flawed hero in a tragic love story set in a dark age of magic and war." Nothing's finalized yet, but here's hoping the makers don't cut the touching love-scene lead-in during which Dracula whispers, "Kissing is very good, but we have something better," before chewing viciously into one of his conquests' necks. The ultimate intimacy. [THR]

Steve Carell may have a pair of new directors, The Hobbit officially gets bumped, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.

· The horse race between Steve Carrell's prospective next projects tightened even further Tuesday, when writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa were said to be close to taking director slots on the actor's untitled family dramedy at Warner Brothers. Ficarra and Requa previously finished re-writes on Mail-Order Groom, another Warners comedy that would reunite Carrell with his Date Night co-star Tina Fey. Odds are 50/50 for either/or/both; look here later for news of the photo finish. [THR]

· After incurring some heavy-duty push-pull that escalated all the way to a defiant Peter Jackson, New Line confirmed Tuesday that it has pushed The Hobbit back to 2012 at the earliest. It will reapproach the project once Hobbit rightsholder MGM gets its imminent sale worked out. [The Wrap]

· Get ready for some sap in space: Pursuit of Happyness and Seven Pounds director Gabriele Muccino will team with Keanu Reeves for the spaceship love story Passengers, featuring the actor as a space traveler who accidentally wakes up from a cryogenic sleep 90 years ahead of time and awakens a female passenger to help him avoid "the prospect of growing old and dying alone." Surely that half-decade of masturbation in between got boring-ish as well. [Variety]



Comments

  • Keiko says:

    I'm sorry, but there is just no up-dating Dracula. The book was so scary at the time because the British Empire was crumbling, and they were afraid that the pure white gene pool would be infected by men of other ethnicities seducing weak-willed white women. (Thanks Britsh Lit Studies!!!) Now that book is straight-up hilarious. The closest thing we have to the old-timey Dracula is infectous zombies.

  • Edward Wilson says:

    The book still works. What doesn't work is when they try to do movies that turn Dracula into some ridiculous lothario or he's motivated by long lost love. In the book he's just pure evil trying to spread the undead like a plague (plus, he barely appears in the novel; he's like the shark in Jaws).
    It would be like making a movie of Ted Bundy where he's humanized as a figure of tragic love.