Castlevania Goes Rogue

By Jon Condit
November 2nd, 2006

Paul W.S. Anderson. Castlevania. Almost makes ya shudder, doesn’t it?

Nevertheless, it’s happening, and as Variety reported this morning, it’s happening under Universal’s genre arm, Rogue Pictures. $50 million is being thrown at Anderson to make the movie happen, which will be based upon a script by Anderson (there’s that shudder) and will take place over various time frames, mostly 15th Century Transylvania.

Obviously Rogue is hoping for the best (they obviously didn’t see Alien vs. Predator) so that the film will set off yet another franchise that will make buckets of money for the company, only hopefully this one will be good (see Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat for those that weren’t).

Crystal Sky Entertainment is handling all the international distro, their second collaboration with Rogue following the recently signed deal for Neal Marshall’s Descent follow-up, Doomsday, for which Marshall is currently scouting locations in South Africa.

Speaking of locations, Anderson and producing partner Jeremy Bolt are looking throughout Hungary and Romania for prime spots to tell the tale of an age-old battle between Dracula and the Belmont family. Castlevania was originally going to be made under Dimension, which would have caused even more shuddering, but they let it slip through their fingers. Hey, at least in Rogue's hands we know it’ll get done and released...

- Johnny Butane