Sometimes, a bit of movie casting is so significant that it threatens to dwarf the wider film – and Renfield finds itself in that particular category. Ostensibly, the film is a present-day comedy about Dracula’s lackey Renfield, as he falls in love with a traffic cop and seeks to extricate himself from the tyranny of his blood-sucking boss. And given that Renfield is played by the ever-great Nicholas Hoult, and the traffic cop is played by the ever-hilarious Awkwafina, in a film that came from an idea conjured up by Robert ‘The Walking Dead’ Kirkman, and directed by The LEGO Batman Movie’s Chris McKay, there’s plenty to be excited about here. But there’s another piece of casting that gets all the headlines – because stepping into the role of Count Dracula himself is the one and only Nicolas Cage, which is a frankly fantastic bit of cinephile wish-fulfillment casting. Check out the trailer here:
It’s a fun first look, one that promises a broad, playful and comedic take on Dracula’s lore, with a What We Do In The Shadows-esque, modern-vampires-of-the-city approach to the blood-and-bats genre. And while the trailer focuses largely on Hoult’s Renfield, given that he’s the title character, the entire trailer really feels like it builds up to the reveal of Cage in his big bad Vlad role. Those glimpses of his performance might be fleeting, but it looks like the legendarily off-the-wall actor is really hamming it up in his take on one of the all-time-great movie monsters. “When I got a sense of where McKay wanted to go, I realised the movie has a comedic, pop art attitude,” Cage told Empire in our latest cover feature, as we ventured to his Las Vegas home for the Greatest Actors issue. “So I thought: ‘This will be a pop-art Dracula.’ Warhol did a great black-on-black Dracula. This is in that Warhol vein.”
Elsewhere, we get some fun twists on the monster-formula – from the self-help group setting as Renfield rankles over his boss’ possessive nature, to the reveal that he gains superpowers from eating spiders. Question: what happens if he chomps one in his sleep, which scientists have sadly revealed that humans regularly do? It’s worth noting that the social media teaser – versus the YouTube version – features some impressive gore too, including an exploding priest, lopped limbs, and a fork-to-the-neck. Check out what we’ll now refer to as the ‘Exploding Priest Cut’ here:
Stay tuned for more of Cage’s sure-to-be-wild performance – and, you know, everything else that looks fun about this one – when Renfield hits UK cinemas on 14 April.