Renfield Preview Pays Homage to Universal’s Classic Dracula

Universal Pictures has released a new television spot for the upcoming Renfield and it’s paying homage to the classic Dracula. The new spot, which you can check out for yourself below, opens in black and white, with Nicolas Cage’s Dracula in a flashback of sort, meeting Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield for the first time. The sequence calls back to the original 1931 Universal monster film, Dracula, which starred Bela Lugosi as the titular vampire.

In the film, Renfield (Hoult), has grown sick and tired of his centuries as Dracula’s (Cage) lackey. The henchman finds a new lease on life and maybe even redemption when he falls for feisty, perennially angry traffic cop Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina).

“I want it to pop in a unique way from how we’ve seen it played,” Cage shared about the appeal of the film. “So, I’m thinking to really focus on the movement of the character You know, I saw Malignant, and I thought what she did with those moves — and even Ringu with Sadako [Yamamura] … I want to look at what we can explore with this movement and voice.”

Additionally, the quirky nature of the concept allows Cage to embrace his comedic side.

“What makes it super fun is that it’s a comedy,” Cage confessed. “And when you get that tone right — comedy and horror — like American Werewolf in London, it’s a blast. It’s got to be a bullseye. But that’s what I’m looking for, something new to bring to the character, and also that perfect tone of comedy and horror.”  

Nicolas Cage confirms his Dracula doesn’t have much screen time in Renfield.

“Well, first of all, I don’t know how you say no to Dracula, but two things come to mind,” Cage shared with Collider of what audiences can expect from the film. “One, he’s a character that’s been done well many times and then been done poorly many times. So, you want to be on the side of doing something well. And also, you want to be on the side of doing something fresh and something that pops.” 

He continued, “To me, because the movie’s really not about me, Dracula rather, I don’t have a lot of screen time. It’s really Nick Hoult’s movie, and it’s about Renfield. I didn’t have the time, like the two-hour narrative to really dig deep into Dracula’s pathos per se. It’s not that. But I did have enough screen time to be able to try to develop a pop-art style to the character that hopefully will be a nice contribution to the other performers that have done it, that have had their take on this legendary character in both literature and cinema.”

Renfield is set to hit theaters on April 14th.