Stoker descendant resurrects Dracula for sequel
Drawing from handwritten notes by Bram Stoker, the horror author’s great-grandnephew is set to pen a Dracula sequel entitled Dracula: The Un-Dead.
The new project is the first story authorized by the Stoker family and estate since the 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi.
The forthcoming Dracula: The Un-Dead ó apparently the title Stoker had intended for his original before an editor changed it ó is slated for release in October 2009 in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. Film rights to the new story have also been sold, with production tentatively scheduled to begin in June 2009.
Dacre Stoker, a former Canadian Olympic pentathlon coach who is now based in the U.S., will co-write the new novel with Dracula historian and screenwriter Ian Holt.
Not having read his ancestor’s 1897 novel until college, Dacre Stoker told the U.K’s Guardian newspaper that he decided to prepare a research paper on the original story and his great-grand-uncle’s motivation in writing it.
“Because the novel was so good and had stood up so well over the years, I found it exceedingly sad that all of the trash Hollywood had put out monumentally sullied Bram’s and my family’s literary legacy,” he told the paper.
After meeting Holt, the duo decided to work together “to give both Bram and Dracula back their dignity.”
The sequel will be set in 1912 and will chronicle trials faced by Quincey, the son of Stoker’s original young hero Jonathan Harker.
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