Universal taps Nicholas Hoult to play Dracula’s deranged sidekick Renfield
The X-Men actor will star in the spin-off film about the vampire's loyal, bug-eating henchman
Film News Dracula
Nicholas Hoult is set to take on another off-kilter role in Universal Pictures’ upcoming side-character monster movie, Renfield, based on Dracula’s deranged lackey. The Tomorrow War director Chris McKay will helm the project, with Rick and Morty’s Ryan Ridley penning the script.
The character Renfield originated in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, where readers meet him while he’s in an asylum; he also has an obsession for drinking blood and eating small creatures, filled with the delusion that it will imbue him with everlasting life. He bends to the will of his vampire king, doing his bidding as Dracula pursues his victims. Previously, Renfield has been depicted by Dwight Frye in 1931’s Dracula and Tom Waits in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation. There’s even a nod to the henchman in the iconic “Dracula” episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, in which goofball sidekick Xander Harris becomes the bug-eating, self-described “butt monkey.”
Hoult’s garnered a reputation for expertly bringing unhinged characters to life, such as Nux in Mad Max: Fury Road and Peter in Hulu’s The Great. His other noteworthy performances include X-Men, The Favourite, and About A Boy. Hoult recently joined the cast of comedy-thriller The Menu, alongside Anya-Taylor Joy, Ralph Fiennes, and Hong Chau. The food-focused horror is produced by Adam McKay and directed by Succession’s Mark Mylod.
Another non-creature feature—for monster slayer Van Helsing—is in the works at Universal as part of the revival of its monster film legacy, which began with remake of The Invisible Man. Well, really it began with the epic failure that was the Tom Cruise-fronted remake of The Mummy, but we won’t count that for Universal’s sake. Other forthcoming films from Universal’s classic monster canon include Wolfman starring Ryan Gosling, Elizabeth Banks’ Invisible Woman, Paul Feig’s Dark Army, and Karyn Kusama’s Dracula.
17 Comments
The idea that it sucks to be Renfield has been around exactly as long the character of Renfield, and there have probably been as many comic adaptations of Dracula as serious ones by this point, so I’m not sure what this is really bringing to the table — other than Nicholas Hoult, who is hilarious in “The Great.”
See, I’m picturing a version of this guy:
Why not both?
Exactly!!!!!
Oh Xander, such a terrible person in retrospect, but so goddamn funny.
I’m a Dracula fan (who isn’t) and Renfield has always kind of been a favourite literary character, and he’s usually my favourite part of any adaptation in which he appears, largely because in cinematic terms he lends himself to weird casting, or an opportunity to create a sense that he belongs in a different movie. Comic actors, musicians, artists, Renfield’s had ‘em all. I always thought John Lydon would have made a good Renfield, in the style of his Copkiller/Order Of Death character.I like him because he’s wretched and pathetic, and because Dracula appears to have influenced him without much in the way of seduction: Renfield is just weak enough to follow Dracula’s will without too much prodding.So a movie in which Renfield is at the centre, played by a regular beautiful actor, seems quite uninteresting to me because I suspect they’ll have to change everything I like (or imagine) about the character to make it a functional piece of drama.
Are you an Alice Cooper fan? Listen to the ballad of Dwight Frye. He had his own sordid tragedy. Read up on Dwight Frye.cheers
I’m very familiar with Dwight Frye and the song
I may be missing the connection, but it doesn’t seem to me that The Ballad of Dwight Fry (no “e”) has much of a connection to the actor other than the soundalike name or that the real Dwight Frye led a particularly sordid life. He seems to have been a hard-working, talented actor who had a couple of very memorable roles and died too young.
I always liked Tom Waites as Renfield , one of the better things from that movie.
Actually, even prior to the recent Mummy film there was “Dracula: Untold”.
This is the first we’ve been told about it.
I’m going to decline to recognize your joke and instead link to the AV Club’s review:https://www.avclub.com/this-dracula-should-have-remained-untold-1798181682
So Renfield , Dracula’s Alfred finally gets his own movie.Ok , I guess , Ok.
Samuel Barnett was also an excellent Renfield in Penny Dreadful.