Karyn Kusama shares why she thinks her Dracula movie got staked through the heart

polygon.com:

In 2020, director Karyn Kusama was tapped to direct a new version of Dracula for Blumhouse Productions. Like The Invisible Man before it, the Dracula movie was going to be set in the modern day: a chance for Universal to reboot its continually doomed Monsterverse.

But Kusama was going to put a twist onDracula. For one, the movie was going to be called Mina Harker instead, and focus on the female protagonist of Bram Stoker’s original novel, with Jasmine Cephas Jones tapped to play her. Given Kusama’s legacy of movies about complicated and powerful women, like Jennifer’s Body, Æon Flux, and Girlfight, Kusama’s take on Dracula would’ve given the old story an interesting edge and point-of-view.

But just three weeks before filming started, Kusama’sDracula movie was canceled. And she’s pretty sure why.

“I would say that the Dracula movie I was making wasn’t a straightforward monster movie,” Kusama shared with Polygon in a video interview. “And so perhaps that was its problem. It was very much rooted in the monsters that start at home in humans. That’s what was going to make it distinctive was that Dracula was more than a force of evil. He was a man. And that is, in some ways, both its reason for being and its obstacle. It was really hard to get the movie made. And even though we got so close, three weeks from shooting, people lost their nerve. So what are you going to do?”

Mina Harker might not have materialized, but Kusama’s been busy with television projects. She serves as an executive producer on Yellowjackets, and next up for her is the third season of AMC’s anthology seriesThe Terror, directing the first two episodes in addition to her role as an executive producer. This season is based on The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle, which follows a man wrongly institutionalized in a mental hospital who confronts a terrifying monster in the halls night after night.

“It’s just a really, really beautiful story of I think systemic failure, personal and ethical failure and