I think it's safe to say I'm taking a
break from the Andy Sidaris collection for a bit. Just a quick break
though, if I can survive Bayformers, Twilight, and all NINE Hellraiser films, a bunch of Playboy Playmates armed with
guns and implants sure aren't going to stop me! Today I thought we'd
take a look at 2014's Dracula Untold, which was the directorial debut
of Gary Shore. Shore made a name for himself directing commercials
for companies such as Gatorade and Adidas, which I guess is all the
qualifications you need to make a feature film in this day and age.
Dracula Untold had a case
of Development Hell to make it to the silver screen, as it was
originally set to be a big budget film by Alex “Dark City”
Proyas and starring Sam Worthington. That didn't work out because
the budget was getting sky high, so it was handed off to Shore and
the writing team of Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. Sazama and
Sharpless are currently hard at word writing the script to MISSILE
COMMAND, which is based off the Atari video game where three lumps of
pixels blasted pixels at incoming pixels. Should be riveting.
They're also credited with the screenplay for the upcoming Clue
remake, because THAT totally needed a remake. I'm telling you,
reboots of the Princess Bride and the Godfather are
right around the corner...
After production was finished,
distributor Universal Pictures saw what Marvel was doing with their
Cinematic Universe and said “Me too! Me too!” so ordered
reshoots to make the film a springboard to their own version. This
was to be a reboot/reimagining/remake of their Universal Monsters
movies, featuring characters such as Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman,
Frankenstein, etc etc etc. Oh goody, so that means ALL movie studios
will be “borrowing” this format soon doesn't it? Four delayed
releases later and the film was FINALLY released on October 10, 2014
where it was ravaged by the critics and only earned 56 million
dollars versus its budget of 70 million. It did MUCH better overseas
because these kind of movies always do, bringing its total to 215
million and all but guaranteeing the Universal Cinematic Universe
will become a thing.
