Nicolas Cage Cast as Dracula for Renfield Spinoff

Over the years, Nicolas Cage has embodied a pretty wide array of memorable roles — and apparently, that will soon include none other than Dracula the vampire. As The Hollywood Reporter revealed on Tuesday, Cage has signed on to star in Renfield, the upcoming monster movie from Universal Pictures. The film will be directed by Chris McKay (The Tomorrow War, The LEGO Batman Movie) and will star Nicholas Hoult as the titular character, the henchman and acolyte of Dracula. The script is written by Rick and Morty‘s Ryan Ridley, based on an outline from The Walking Dead and Invincible co-creator Robert Kirkman. Both McKay and Kirkman are producing along with David Alpert, Bryan Furst and Sean Furst, with Samantha Nisenboim executive producing.

In the original Dracula novel, R.M. Renfield was an inmate at a lunatic asylum who was thought to be suffering from delusions but actually is a servant of Dracula. While plot details are currently unknown, it has been rumored that the film takes place in the present day.

“We’re doing this cool movie for Universal that’s a focus on Renfield,” Kirkman said during an appearance on the Fatman Beyond podcast earlier this year. “It’s a story about him being Dracula’s henchman, and how shitty a job that is. It’s a fun, extremely violent comedy, because I’ve got a crutch and it’s violence.”

Renfield marks Cage’s latest role amid indie hits such as Pig and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. As the actor revealed to Entertainment Weekly this past September, he does not have plans to stop acting anytime soon.

“No, no, no. No, no. That can’t happen,” Cage said of retirement. “To do what I do in cinema has been like a guardian angel for me, and I need it. I’m healthier when I’m working, I need a positive place to express my life experience, and filmmaking has given me that. So I’m never going to retire. Where are we now, 117 movies? [Laughs] What’s funny is, my argument with people who go, ‘You work too much,’ was ‘I like working, and it’s healthy, I’m happy when I’m working, and by the way, guys like Cagney and Bogart, they were doing hundreds of movies.’ And then I went, ‘I’d better check that,’ and I went, ‘Oops.’ [Laughs] Jerry Lewis was one of my friends, and he and I would go and have dinner together, and he would say, ‘How many movies you got?’ I go, ‘I got about 100, how many you got?’ ‘I got 40. So you got twice as much as me?’ ‘Well, I didn’t know that, Jerry.’”

What do you think of Nicolas Cage joining the cast of Renfield? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!