While we may be a way off from any new episodes of Sherlock, its creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have been keeping busy, with the pair working on a new literary adaptation – Dracula.
The new take on the iconic vampire won’t be on TV for a while yet – but here’s what we know about it so far.
- Steven Moffat’s Dracula drama WON’T be set in the modern day
- Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss will start writing their Dracula series “next month” – and they have some great ideas
- Mark Gatiss reveals the part he wants to play in his new Dracula TV series
This article will be regularly updated
When is Dracula coming to TV?
Definitely not for a long while. Gatiss and Moffat revealed they were due to start writing the series earlier this year, with the pair starting work on the scripts in March which are expected to be 90-minute episodes, like Sherlock.
“We’ve got a lot of ideas, we need to go and sit down now and really talk about it,” Moffat told us at the Radio Times Covers Party earlier this year.
“But once we get moving, we’ll move fast.”
With the time that has since passed, it seems reasonable to assume the series may shoot sometime early next year, and then come to TV a fair few months after that.
Notably, Gatiss estimated it would take “about two years” from early February this year, so for now we’re estimating that Dracula may come to screens sometime in late 2019 or early 2020. Mark your calendars!
Who will star in Dracula?
At the moment, no casting has been announced, though Gatiss said they had some ideas.
“Who could play Dracula himself? Well, that’s a very good question,” Gatiss said. “Or herself? No, that’s a mistake. That’ll haunt me for the next 10 years.
“It’s a very interesting question because in Stoker’s novel he’s an old man, who does get younger. That’s rarely done. Gary Oldman did it, it’s rarely done. That’s quite interesting.
“But obviously, the point of Dracula was that he’s the first kind of Byronic vampire. He’s the first one that set pulses racing. The vampire tradition up to Stoker is much more horrible.
“I remember reading a book when I was a child, a pre-Dracula book, and when they find the vampire it’s fat like a slug, full of blood and its mouth is all gory. And I was horrified by that! Because you kind of grow up with the idea of Dracula being much more sophisticated.
“We’re not going to go down that [slug] model, I think,” he joked. “So it’s a question of where we land on that scale, really. No idea who it’s going to be.”
But would Gatiss, who played a big part in Sherlock as Mycroft Holmes, be up for making another onscreen appearance?
“I don’t know yet [if I’ll be in it],” he said in 2017.
“The part I’d like is obviously Renfield, the mad man. That’s the best part. We’ll see.”
What is Dracula about?
Well, Dracula of course! Moffat and Gatiss are set to bring a new take to one of the most iconic characters in fiction, the blood-sucking vampire created by Bram Stoker for his 1897 novel, and who has informed the popular culture image of vampires ever since.
At the moment all we know about their version of the story is that it won’t follow Moffat’s last two literary adaptations (Jekyll and Sherlock) in presenting modernised versions of the characters, with the screenwriter noting the difference in a radio interview last year.
“We’re not modernising it or anything, but we are doing a version of Dracula,” he said.
Apart from that, Moffat and Gatiss are keeping the series fairly under wraps for now.
“I’m really not telling you anything about what we’ve got,” Moffat told us in January.
“We know what we’re doing, but we’re not saying it yet.”
Who’s making Dracula?
As noted above, the series is created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, and produced by Hartswood Films – that’s the company run by Moffat’s wife and creative partner Sue Vertue – who also made Sherlock.
Because the series is still so far off, it’s still unknown exactly which channel it will air on., but it’s understood the BBC are keen to broadcast Dracula like they did Sherlock.
from Radio Times https://ift.tt/2vnai3K
