While Sherlock creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss may have cast Danish actor Claes Bang as their Dracula ahead of filming for their new vampire adaptation, they’re still keeping much of the three-part drama under wraps, with the majority of the cast and plot details still a mystery before filming begins in 2019.
Still, according to Gatiss things are moving along very smoothly – even if we are still in for a bit of a wait before they even start shooting.
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“Where are we up to? Uh, page number….” the writer and actor joked.
“No, we’re filming the beginning of next year. It’s going very well, thank you.”
In the meantime, Gatiss has had another supernatural story to work on – BBC4’s original ghost story The Dead Room, which Gatiss wrote and directed over the summer for broadcast this Christmas Eve – and as it turns out, thanks to cast member Susan Penhaligon it may have offered a bit of inspiration for Dracula as well.
“Susan is also in what for me and Steven Moffat is the definitive Dracula, of 1977,” Gatiss told RadioTimes.com, referring to a BBC adaptation that starred Louis Jordan as the Count and which has been acclaimed as one of the best screen versions of Bram Stoker’s novel.
“The definitive Lucy Westenra, she is.”
“Oh, thank you for that,” Susan replied. “That was before CGI, you know, where they did the effects in the studio.”
So from the sounds of it, anyone looking for any clues about what will be in the new BBC Dracula could do a lot worse than taking a look back at the old one. If nothing else, it’s clearly a big inspiration.
The Dead Room airs on BBC4 on Christmas Eve (Monday 24th December) at 10.00pm
from Radio Times http://bit.ly/2EO3eT8
