Dracula Spinoff Renfield Adds Ben Schwartz

By Jamie Jirak

At the end of last month, it was announced that Oscar-winning actor, Nicolas Cage, will be playing Dracula 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 of Dracula. The script is being written by Rick and Morty's Ryan Ridley, based on an outline from The Walking Dead and Invincible co-creator Robert Kirkman. The cast list keeps growing, with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star, Awkwafina, recently announced in an unknown role. This week, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation, Sonic the Hedgehog) has also joined the cast. 

According to the report, Schwartz has been cast as a mobster in the film, which is expected to follow Renfield and his "toxic and co-dependent relationship" with Dracula, bringing the story "to a modern-day setting in an adventure story that is said to be comedic in tone." 

"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."

As for Cage, the actor recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly and revealed if he has any plans to retire.

"At my age, the job that I have is to stay interested, because if I'm not interested, you're not going to be interested," Cage explained. "It gets more difficult the older we get. So I have to find new ways of expressing myself, new challenges. But I do think, God willing, that once I finish the next two movies, I'm going to take some time off, because I think it's time to recharge."

"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.'"

Renfield does not yet have a release date, but it's expected to come out sometime in 2023.

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