ComingSoon.net/ShockTillYouDrop.com just got off the phone with filmmaker Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City) after talking briefly about his upcoming sci-fi thriller Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage. Proyas has been hard at work in the post-production of the film, but we wondered if there’d been any progress on the two other films he’d been developing, The Tripods, based on the series by John Christopher, and Dracula Year Zero, a proposed origin story for Bram Stoker’s legendary vampire.
Both are still in active development so either could be Proyas’ next project. “I’m working on a bunch of different things and the two projects I’m excited about are an adaptation of John Christopher’s The Tripod stories that I’ve co-written with Stuart Hazeldine, who is one of our writers on ‘Knowing’, and the Dracula project,” the Australian filmmaker told us. “Both are very exciting projects but at this stage, we’re still in the budgeting process for both, so I can’t really tell you much more than that.”
“I’m not a fan of remakes or sequels I haven’t done any and I’m not really that excited by them usually,” Proyas said when asked about his decision to make a movie based on a character whose had an extensive life in film. “In the case of Dracula, the reason I got excited about the project is I read a particular script that puts the whole legend on its head in every conceivable way and comes out with something that is both a kind of an ode to Bram Stoker’s original Dracula, in that it’s kind of a prequel to that, but it also redefines the character to such an extent that I found it quite exciting, so that is very much a kind of reinvention of that character and it’s why I got excited about it.”
Knowing opens on March 20, 2009. Look for the full interview with Proyas over on ComingSoon.net shortly before then.
