Nicolas Cage is back sinking his teeth into the vampire subgenre (the first time since Vampire's Kiss) with his upcoming horror-comedy movie Renfield. This time the iconic actor stars as the legendary vampire Count Dracula, but he's not just any Dracula but the Dracula, who was initially immortalized on the silver screen by the late Bela Lugosi. However, if the wild first trailer is anything to go off of, it’s clear this take on the classic vampire is far from the black and white 1931 version that popularized the legendary bloodsucker. Renfield, directed by the Lego Batman Movie’s Chris McKay, carries a hard R with it, and in a new interview, he and writer Robert Kirkman explained why they wanted that rating for their addition to the ‘slapstick’ horror genre.
The upcoming vamp movie explores the complicated and toxic relationship between the Count and his assistant, the titular Renfield, played pitch-perfectly by Nicholas Hoult. After years of bringing victims for his master to feed on, Hoult’s character decides to quit his life of servitude, and is determined to break free from his immortal master. Though it has a funny premise, the new flick is not for the faint of heart, boasting violence, buckets of gore, strong language throughout, and some drug use. In a recent interview with Universal Pictures (via SyFy), McKay explained that he wanted to make the film a worthy addition to the “splatstick” horror category. The filmmaker said:
