‘Wanted’ Producers Acquire Rights To ‘Dear Dracula’

Kickstart Entertainment (Wanted) have acquired the cinematic rights to the 48-page comic book entitled Dear Dracula. It’s a 2008 Image/Shadowline comic written by Joshua Williamson, illustrated by Vicente Navarrete and released through Silverline.

Dear Dracula tells the story a young horror fan who writes to the world’s most famous vampire on Halloween, just as any other kid would write to Santa Claus at Christmas. To the boy’s surprise, Dracula not only replies to his letter, but takes him on “an exploration of what it means to be a vampire.” It sounds pretty damn good to me: I always love seeing movies that put a new spin on something.

The Dear Dracula comic sounds pretty unique; in interviews last year around its Halloween 2008 release, as well as more recently, Williamson talked about the nature of the book (which is both for kids and adults alike), as well as its just announced adaptation:

“It’s a Halloween adventure which is definitely geared toward a younger audience with adults still in mind, and I think captures that magic of a kid’s imagination and just being a kid.”

“Dracula himself was the beginning inspiration. I’d always wanted to do a book with him and started doing a lot of research on the legend… After a while, I started looking into his impact on our culture and how he was this pop icon.”

“We’ve kept everything from the book and expanded on it. If people enjoyed the book, they’re going to love the movie.”

An interesting thing to note is that originally the Dear Dracula was supposed to be made in the style of stop-motion animation (think Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline); as now it’s being done with CGI animation. I would rather they had went with the original stop-motion intention, simply because the style is more endearing than the crisp, clean, “perfect” look of CGI (not that that ain’t great to look at too… have you seen UP?).

The script will be written by Williamson and Navarrete – probably to help keep the movie as close to what they originally put on the printed page of the comic (as they hinted at in their quote above). No director has been set for the project as of yet.

Do you like the sound of the Dear Dracula comic-book? Do you think it would make for a good CGI animated movie?

Sources: ShockTillYouDrop, CBR and HollywoodNorthReport

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