Dracula spin-off Renfield in the works

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

With Blumhouse and Leigh Whannel's THE INVISIBLE MAN coming soon it looks like other movie monsters are getting the reboot treatment as well. And today we've learned ROCKETMAN director Dexter Fletcher has been hired to helm Universal’s Dracula spin-off RENFIELD. 

Robert Kirkman (THE WALKING DEAD) came up with the original pitch and Ryan Ridley (RICK AND MORTY) will write the script. Plot details are currently unknown, though it’s believed to take place during the present day and is not a period piece.

So in lieu of plot synopsis, here is a description of Renfield from the novel:

R. M. Renfield, aetat 59. Sanguine temperament, great physical strength, morbidly excitable, periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which I cannot make out. I presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish, a possibly dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In selfish men, caution is as secure an armor for their foes as for themselves. What I think of on this point is, when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal. When duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and only an accident or a series of accidents can balance it.

— From Dr. John Seward's journal

The film is produced by Kirkman, David Alpert, Bryan Furst, and Sean Furst. Tom Waits played Renfield in Francis Ford Coppola's BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (see above). Meanwhile, Peter "It's Vigo!" MacNicol played the role in Mel Brooks' DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT (see below).