In Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, the title character boards a ship called the Demeter to travel from Transylvania to England. By the time the ship runs aground in England, the bloodsucking Count has managed to wipe out the entire crew. In 2002, screenwriter Bragi Schut (SEASON OF THE WITCH, ESCAPE ROOM) was inspired to flesh out the Demeter portion of Stoker's novel into a feature film that would take place entirely on the ship as
the crew is slaughtered one by one by a mysterious passenger.
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For seventeen years, Schut's screenplay for THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER has been drifting through the studio system like a ship lost at sea.
THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER has passed through the hands of studios like Phoenix Pictures and Millennium Films, and caught the attention of filmmakers like Robert Schwentke (R.I.P.D.), Neil Marshall (THE DESCENT), David Slade (30 DAYS OF NIGHT), Stefan Ruzowitzky (PATIENT ZERO), and Marcus Nispel (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2003, FRIDAY THE 13TH 2009). Actors Ben Kingsley, Noomi Rapace, Jude Law, and Viggo Mortensen have all been offered roles at various points, some of them have even officially signed on. But the project never made it into production.
Now DEMETER has found a home at Amblin Partners, and there's a new director at the helm. André Øvredal, director of TROLLHUNTER and SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK, has signed on to finally bring THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER to the screen. We'll see if he has better luck than the directors who have come before him.
Bradley Fischer, Mike Medavoy, and Arnold Messer are producing the film.
Øvredal doesn't intend to jump directly into DEMETER, though. It's looking like he'll direct an adaptation of the Stephen King / Richard Bachman story THE LONG WALK for New Line Cinema first.
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