Nicolas Cage plays Dracula (!) to a fed up familiar in new Renfield trailer
We repeat: Nic! Cage! plays! Dracula! Is there anything more we really need to say?
Aux News Nicolas Cage
The premise for Universal’s new horror-comedy, Renfield, sounds like it was plucked directly from film Twitter’s list of wildest fantasies (or potentially just the brain of someone after one too many edibles): “what if there was a What We Do In The Shadows-style vampire workplace comedy, but it was about actual Dracula, and Dracula was played by Nicolas Cage?”
Well, folks, get ready to hide your carotid arteries because it’s all happening. And it’s as deeply, weirdly, and beautifully Cagey as you’d expect.
All that juicy Cage goodness doesn’t come until the end of the trailer. First, we have to meet his beleaguered familiar Guillermo Renfield, played by an equally well-cast Nicholas Hoult (The Menu, The Great). He’s joined a support group because he needs to “get out of a toxic relationship.” His boss, Nic Cage-ula, gives him special, murder-y powers, and in return, Renfield delivers him specific victim orders like “a busload or cheerleaders” or “a handful of nuns.”
“You’re like the guy that gets the villain’s Postmates,” remarks a cop buddy (played by Awkwafina) who for some reason didn’t immediately phone the FBI when she found out vampires were real. (Although, let’s be honest, we probably wouldn’t have either if they were, you know, Nicolas Cage).
Finally, at the end of the trailer, Nic is accidentally invited into the support group’s gym, where he proceeds to hover over their terrified heads and utter the immortal words: “I am Dracula.” It’s not quite “not the bees, ahhhhh,” but come on, he has fangs this time. We have no doubt that Renfield will be a worthy and glorious addition to the Cage-iverse.
Renfield premieres in theaters April 14.
46 Comments
A C Suite exec said, “What if Guillermo wasn’t ethnic?”
Are you aware that Renfield predates Guillermo?
I think you got that take backwards.
A C Suite exec said, “What if Guillermo wasn’t ethnic?”Kids these days… SMHRenfield was there long before Guillermo. In Anne Rice’s Dracula.
If you have seen 1992 Dracula. He was the guy locked up in asylum, played by the awesome Tom Waits.
In whose Dracula?
My mistake!
Bram Stoker’s DraculaGot mixed up because I just read AV scathing review of Anne Rice’s The Mayfair Witches.
You don’t say?
I’ve been on a huge Cage kick lately (Mandy, Unbearable Weight, Pig, Colour out of Space), and boy, I’m ready for this. At first I was wary of a Renfield film of all things, but fuck it. This is the kind of silly shit we have the public domain for. Give it to me now.
Unbearable Weight was somehow the right movie at the right time for me. Absolutely the best Cage in years. And as someone who should have loved Adaptation but absolutely hated it, that’s saying a lot. Is Pig really that good?? And I’m not sure I’ve even heard of Color out of Space.
This is Nic’s way of getting back on the Vampire Council. They kicked him off in 1988, when it turned out he only thought he was a vampire.
Can’t wait for the interviews during the media cycle for this. Cage is going to talk about how he drew inspiration from an obscure 19th century Russian chemist and the third Smokey and the Bandit film to inform his performance.
I mean, he’s just the best.
I suppose it should have been obvious, but somehow I didn’t realize from the previous articles about this movie that it was going to be a comedy. But it looks like stupid fun.
Yeah, for some reason I thought this was a more straightforward thriller thing, but this looks super fun. Bring on the non-remake non-cinematic universe R-rated horror comedy, thank you.
Yes, exactly! Stupid fun, with Nic Cage as a narcissistic Count Dracula and Awkafina (again) as the gal pal who steps up when needed.Speaking of which—was her Katy in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings supposed to be his girlfriend at the end of the movie, or still just his gal pal…?
I thought it was going to be a comedy in some capacity, but what surprised me was it taking place in modern day. (I kind of figured it was going to be a colorblind cast period movie.)
I initially didn’t either, and then that gloriously cheeseball set photo of Cage leaked and I figured it had to be a comedy.Then again, the Wicker Man re-make was Cage running around in a bear costume, punching teenagers and old ladies, and that wasn’t (intentional) comedy. I guess you can never know for sure when it’s Cage until you see the movie, and maybe not even then.
Wow, this looks genuinely terrible.
tomorrow war was god awful but mckay’s got some good gag bonafides. love that playing dracula is cage’s return to studio pictures. welcome back, man.
I get that it’s a popular meme and stuff but this episode of Rick and Morty is more or less when the show totally died for me. Whenever I see this meme it’s like stringing up the corpse of a once great TV show.
I guess it could be worse, a meme from the ridiculous sex dragon episode could have become popular. Woof.
Looks absurd and I can’t wait to see it!
My cousin Nosey went through a bitey phase and never came out of it. We used to call him Nipsey Russell because he kept nipping children’s fingers. Good times.
It’s been a long time since Vampire’s Kiss.
This would be a really exciting premise for a film if we weren’t already three seasons into this premise.
BAT!
HUMAN FORM!
4 seasons! Unless you’re only counting the ones where the familiar is also an efficient killing machine.
Shit, it was four already? Thanks for the correction.It’s weird for such a niche comedy idea to be so well-worn already. The WWDITS movie didn’t center the familiar, but the show sure as hell did. I wonder whether the Renfield writers studied it to avoid duplication or just avoided it altogether (I hope they didn’t just study it to rip it off).On the other hand, Dracula is so iconic and yet so flawed that there has never been a truly good Dracula film (or novel). Focusing on Renfield might actually be the best way to get there.
According to a nobody like you
When are we gonna get the film with Rainn Wilson as draculas familiar? The film we deserve.
I only saw 10 seconds of the trailer and immediately thought “This is Guillermo’s story.”
Will this be the first vampire whose hair resembles a bird, and therefore makes all of our arguments invalid?
I need my ticket for this movie like right now!This is a close 2nd behind Cocaine Bear as the 2023 movie I need to see!
It annoys me to no end how people keep talking about the similarities of this movie and WWDITS, when a much better comparison is to Mel Brook’s “Dracula: Dead and Loving it”. Kids these days, I swear…
Give him an enema!
Yeah honestly after my Dad and I watched this trailer I kept saying “Renfield!” in a Leslie Nielsen impersonation. This movie is channelling Dead and Loving it so hard. I’d go as far to say that Nic Cage as Dracula is exactly on brand with Leslie Nielsen doing it. Thank you for giving me a segway to gush about Leslie Nielsen oh my gosh, Wrongfully Accused? The Naked Gun trilogy. Yes yes yes.
I feel like we are approaching peak peak-iness on a couple fronts with this movie:1 – Vampires are dicks, and their familiars allow themselves to be treated like shit in the vain hopes that they will get their promised immortality – which they won’t, because vampire are dicks and they tell lies all the time.2 – Celebrities are dicks, and their familiars allow themselves to be treated like shit because they’re starfuckers with zero self-esteem.Vampires and celebrities are well aware of this dynamic and are only too happy to exploit it to the max. And the beat goes on, la di da di da….
No one in film today is doing forehead work like Nicholas Hoult.
1) Nicholas Hoult is really, really good at these kinds of characters that are a leeetle bit reprehensible and a lot, lot, lot of fun.2) Hey, another movie where Nicholas Hoult eats bugs and that’s normal.3) Nicolas Cage is going to be so batshit good in this too.
No kidding about 1). Hoult spends the first season of The Great making the audience long for his swift demise at the hands of Catherine, and the second season making the audience root for his demented courtship of Catherine, while not actually changing anything about his portrayal of the character. First I could not see him get offed fast enough and now I really hope the show will find a way to keep him around.
Oh, I know. In The Great, he somehow makes the character simultaneously a hilarious idiot, genuinely scary, and quite forlorn.
The whole cast for that show is fantastic, but he pulled off something that seems like it should be impossible. (He was also the most delightful character in Mad Max: Fury Road.)
The idea made me go “ooh” but the trailer made me go “ugh”. I was with it until Renfield got super powers.
Don’t like the teeth. More like a ghoul.