Thursday, July 23, 2009

James Wan to Wrtie and Direct 'Castlevania' Adaptation

Crystal Sky Pictures obtained the rights to adapt the video game "Castlevania" in 2005 and were quick to bring on Paul W.S. Anderson ("Resident Evil" and it's sequels) to write and direct the film adaptation. As the years progressed, Dimension Films passed the domestic distribution rights off to Rouge Pictures, Paul W.S. Anderson made broad statements about what the film was going to look and feel like, the writer's strike happened, Anderson dumped directing duties to work on "Death Race" and Sylvain White ("Stomp The Yard") was brought in to direct.

Now someone new is at the helm of the project. James Wan, the director/co-writer/co-producer on the first "Saw" and solo director on "Dead Silence" and "Death Sentence," is now attached to "Castlevania" as director.

"I'm very fresh on this project, so its early stages and I'm still trying to work things out, but the producers love my vision for it," James Wan told Bloody-Disgusting. "I'll be working on the script with a writer to give it a new spin, different to the previous versions. This will have my stamp on it which Konami is very excited about.

"The thing I love about what Konami did with Castlevania, was taking the iconic Dracula mythology and Eastern-European setting, and retelling it with a Japanese pop-cultural sensibility," he said. "That’s the East-meets-West tone I want to visually expand on for the film. I’m thrilled by the opportunity to make a highly stylized, fantasy, action film that focuses on the gothic storyline and the cool, anime-like characters. For once, the human hero is as sexy and dangerous as the vampire villain, and his weapon of choice was what attracted me to the project in the first place – The Vampire Killer Whip.”

"Castlevania" is an adaptation of the popular NES game from the 80's that has since become a massive video game franchise.
More news to come! Catch ya' later!
Sources: Latino Review, Bloody-Disgusting

2 comments:

Mikey said...

If anything, I like the idea of this guy better than Paul Anderson, so that's a start. It might actually look cool and creepy. We shall see...

Head Hero said...

Ha! Yeah, I don't really see greatness in Paul Anderson.

But I am hoping for this to be action/horror, which was what the "Resident Evil" movies were kind of going for (though didn't really achieve).