A number of Renfield set visit reports are making their way online this morning (you’ll find ours in the forthcoming issue of FANGORIA Magazine, which you can pick up via this link), and it certainly sounds like everyone who visited the NOLA set of Chris McKay’s forthcoming action-horror-comedy had a helluva good time while they were there. To be fair, you’d almost have to be trying to have a bad time in order to not enjoy visiting Nic Cage on-set in New Orleans, but still.
Anyway, from these set visits an interesting story has emerged. Over at Collider, they’ve got an interview with McKay where he clarifies something unexpected: Renfield is actually intended to be a direct sequel to Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931), which puts it in the running for the most overdue sequel of all time.
Says McKay:
“I kept telling marketing that that’s what we should say, that this is the only direct sequel. I guess you could argue Dracula’s Daughter is a sequel because the opening scene is the aftermath of the Tod Browning movie, but Bela Lugosi’s not in it, it’s a whole different set of characters. And it’s a great movie, it’s wild if you haven’t seen it. I thought the movie was great. But to me, this is the only real direct sequel with the Dracula and the Renfield of that movie.
So yeah, I wish they’d use that in the marketing. I think that would’ve been a funny way of positioning this movie. The longest time between the original movie and the sequel, beating Psycho, or whatever. I guess ‘Avatar’ maybe now, since it feels like a long time since the first one.”
One imagines that some horror fans will bristle at this claim (we horror nerds love to argue technicalities), but we’re prepared to give McKay this one. Of course, we won’t know if McKay’s made a worthy sequel to Tod Browning’s original until Renfield hits theaters, but the pre-release chatter on this one suggests that just might be the case.
Head on over to Collider to read the rest of their interview highlights with McKay, and do stay tuned for more on Renfield as we draw ever closer to the film’s arrival in theaters on April 14th.
