Luke Evans - P 2013
Getty ImagesLuke Evans has played a couple of Greek gods and even a musketeer, but now he is about to play the most god-like of literary characters.
In his first starring role for a studio, Evans has signed to topline in Dracula Year Zero, Universal’s dramatic horror movie telling an origin story of the most famous of vampires. (UPDATE: A Universal rep says the film will now be called simply Dracula.)
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Michael De Luca is producing the project, which quietly has been greenlighted and hopes to start shooting later this year. Commercials helmer Gary Shore is making his directorial debut on the picture.
Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless wrote the script. Alissa Phillips is executive producing.
Universal, once the home for literature’s most horrifying characters, set the tone for Dracula’s screen image for decades with its 1931 classic. Now, this project hopes to set the tone for the modern age with a historical-oriented origin story.
The script tells of a young prince who, when the lives of his wife and child are put in danger by a bloodthirsty sultan, risks his soul to save them, and in the process becomes the first vampire.
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Evans already is well known to the studio: the actor is playing the villain in its Fast & Furious 6, which opens May 24. He played Zeus in Immortals and Apollo in Clash of the Titans, and starred with John Cusack in the Edgar Allan Poe thriller The Raven.
Evans, repped by WME and United Agents, will be seen portraying Bard the Bowman in the upcoming installments of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies.
Vp of production Anikah McLaren and creative executive Jay Polidoro are overseeing the project for Universal.
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