Luc Besson is preparing a Dracula film with Caleb Landry Jones and Christoph Waltz

The filmmaker and Caleb Landry Jones never leave each other.

Dracula is indeed back. After a year 2023 rich in vampirism, the legendary vampire will still be talked about in 2024 and 2025. Deadline announced that Luc Besson was going to tackle Dracula for his next feature film, a new adaptation of the classic horror novel by Bram Stoker. The project has been simmering on the market for some time, but is now consolidating with Paris-based seller Kinology, which is handling sales and discussing the project with potential distributors. It is the biggest European project on the European Film Market.

For the casting, Luc Besson renews its collaboration with the main actor of his latest film DogMan, Caleb Landry Jones. A reclusive creature, just like the hero of DogMan since Caleb should play the iconic Transylvanian count. Christopher Waltz will also be there, but we don’t yet know in what role (we’re betting on Van Helsing as editor, but we’re not risking much).

Presented at the Venice Film Festival, DogMan had signed Besson’s return to cinema despite the controversies: the director of Leon Or The fifth Elementhad tried to return to the stage after the flop of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and after a series of accusations of sexual assault against him, from which he defends himself. DogMan ended his French career with less than 290,000 admissions.

The pitch would focus on a fantasy axis of the novel, namely a love story between the creature and the damsel in distress, typical figures of gothic stories. This would involve further exploring the historical elements impacting on the tragic romance between Prince Vlad III and his wife. The loss of his wife inspires him to abandon his religious beliefs, leading to his transformation into a vampire. This aspect had already been addressed by Francis Ford Coppola in the crazy prologue of his Dracula (1992), with Winona Ryder and of Gary Oldman. We will see if the Besson project can measure up to the Gothic fresco of the director of The Godfather.

And so, before the Besson version of Dracula, the month of December 2024 will be honored by the landing of Nosferatudirected by Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Northman And The Lighthouse) composed of a five-star cast: Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney, William Dafoe And Nicholas Hoult who seems decidedly addicted to vampires (after Renfield).