Dracula: Year Zero

We've been talking about Universal's Dracula: Year Zero for a very long time around these parts, and it finally looks as if a director is close to being chosen.

Yep, that's right, kids! You'll soon be seeing Sam Worthington taking up the role of Count Dracula in Alex Proyas' Dracula: Year Zero. Excited? We are. Though we're more curious to see how someone who is usually as wooden as the stakes that can take down even the baddest of bloodsuckers will handle playing one of horror's most charismatic heroes.

There's no doubt Hollywood's latest golden boy, Sam Worthington, is enjoying the fast track to stardom. From targeting Terminators to getting the blues in a little movie called Avatar to his upcoming tussle with the Titans, the man's making quite the career out of whipping ass. His next stop -- Alex Proyas' Dracula: Year Zero.

Now that he's done introducing Nicolas Cage and Nicolas Cage's hair to the Devil's Sudoku in Knowing, director Alex Proyas is more than ready to sink his teeth into Dracula: Year Zero. But what's taking so long to get going?

Whatever Alex Proyas does next, I hope he got the whole “working with Nicolas Cage” thing out of his system. There’s nothing worse than wanting to be excited for a film (in this case Knowing) but not being able to because of its star.

Mike DeLuca, former president of production at New Line, is returning to the scaled-down label to produce an adaptation of the forthcoming time-travel thriller The Thirteenth Hour, written by Richard Doetsch, according to this morning’s Variety.

Alex Proyas (Dark City) had many of us wondering just what he was going to do with the Dracula name when he spoke briefly about the project at SDCC 08. Indeed Mr. Proyas has great vision, but what could he bring to the vampire world that we haven't already seen before?