He may have come to be globally adored as Wolverine, but for many, few performances can top that of Hugh Jackman’s Van Helsing. For those unfamiliar with the blockbuster film, it saw our Aussie golden boy star as the famed vampire slayer who is dispatched to Transylvania to assist the last of the Valerious bloodline in defeating Count Dracula. It didn’t have the teen angst of say, Twilight, but it proved successful all the same thanks to Jackman’s notable acting chops and a whole lot of action. Since the 2004 flick took cinemas by storm, fans have been expectantly waiting the development of a franchise. While Universal Pictures apparently tried hard to make that happen, things haven’t worked out. But that could all be about to change.
According to reports from Deadline, Universal Pictures has been working closely with James Wan over the last few years to produce a new Van Helsing. Now, it’s been reported that Julius Avery has come aboard to direct the project. It’s a fitting choice when you consider Avery’s past film credits, which include the zombie-filled World War II film, Overlord in 2018. His next feature, Samaritan, will star Sylvester Stallone and is slated to come out in the first half of 2021.
It’s believed a script was already finalised when Avery’s involvement in the film came to be announced. That script was penned by Eric Pearson, whose credits include Thor: Ragnarok and the upcoming Black Widow. But despite having the material to work with, Cinema Blend reports that Avery will be doing his own rewrite.
Presently, details surrounding the upcoming project are scarce. There is yet to emerge any detail surrounding the plot or potential cast, and as a result fans have largely refrained from speculating on the direction of the film. It’s hard to say whether this new reboot will prove different from previous adaptations – and certainly there have been a lot that have come before it. While we might love the film for putting Hugh Jackman’s character front and centre of all the action, the role of Van Helsing first came to appear in 1958’s Dracula.
Laurence Olivier then played the part in 1979’s Dracula, followed by Anthony Hopkins and Christopher Plummer. As Cinema Blend suggests, the “expectation won’t be for it to feature the titular hero facing off against monsters established in other movies (which would have been the plan had the Dark Universe actually become a thing after Alex Kurtzman’s The Mummy), but instead we may get a more self-contained story that is more focused on specifically accentuating what’s great about the character than building out a larger world or even aiming to start a whole series.”
It might be some time before we see Van Helsing return to the big screen, with the coronavirus continuing to delay film production. But it’s certainly an exciting prospect and welcome news. We’ll be sure to keep you updated as more information unfolds.
