Or at least he’s in negotiations to do so.
According to Variety, Sam Worthington is currently working out a deal to star in Universal Pictures’ Dracula Year Zero which will be directed by Alex Proyas (Dark City, Knowing) from a script by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless.
Though the trade says the exact plot of the movie is a secret, Steven James Snyder over at Techland.com had a conversation with Proyas where he revealed a bit more about how he’s approaching this most iconic of movie monsters:
It’s all about how Vlad of Transylvania became this creature; the choices that he made to make him into this tragic character. It’s so intriguing to me, to approach this as a character study on a huge, epic canvas. The script is from these two young guys who have never really done a script before, but they basically did their thing and have reinvented the whole context of this most familiar personality.
It’s worth it to note that the original novel by Bram Stoker was itself a reworking of the history of Transylvanian lore about Vlad the Impaler combined with subtle influences of Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel Carmilla and John Polidori’s The Vampyre, both of which preceded Stoker’s publication.
Of course, Universal’s re-telling of the vampire story is part of a major bid to re-establish the studio in the public’s eye as the place to go when you want to see a movie featuring monsters and I have a feeling that the fate of this new Dracula movie is going to rest with how audiences react to the upcoming The Wolfman in February.