In early 2024, Luc Besson (“The Fifth Element,” “Lucy“) revealed he was bringing Dracula back to the big screen in “Dracula: A Love Story.” Flash forward almost one year and one “Nosferatu“ later, we have a trailer, a release date, and two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz in the lead.
The timing of this film seems pretty impeccable. Robert Eggers scored a sizable hit with “Nosferatu,” which debuted in theaters Christmas 2024. The complicated history over the alleged plagiarism of Bram Stoker‘s novel by the original 1922 film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” has long since passed thanks to things lapsing into the public domain, but we have an interesting turnabout here with Besson bringing us his take on Dracula almost a year after Eggers.
“Dracula: A Love Story” seems to be delivering us a similar theme to what more ardent fans of Dracula in media would expect. The Count loses the only woman he loved to the viciousness of humanity and its penchant for war, forsakes God, and becomes a vampiric lord. Besson uses this theme of lost love and vengeance to fuel his titular character, played by Caleb Landry Jones (“Get Out“). Meanwhile, Waltz, while not named as such, appears to be taking on more of a Van Helsing role in identifying the vampire threat and communicating it to others.
Zoë Bleu, Matilda De Angelis, Ewens Abid, David Shields, and Guillaume de Tonquédec also star. The film features original music composed by Danny Elfman.
The “love story” part of things comes from Dracula trying to find the reincarnated soul of his lost love, and he’s very adamant about finding her. He will not let his life be owned by God unless he gets his wife back. Drac isn’t messing around, and since this is a Luc Besson film, the question remains as to how over the top this quest for love is going to get. Unlike last years “Nosferatu” which was more deliberate in its pacing; slow and methodical in its approach, Besson effectively is throwing a lot at us all at once. We see Waltz confronting Dracula, swords being swung at necks, canon fire in the middle of a war, and Dracula trying to get into a woman’s pants, er um, collar in this case.
Honestly, we’re not entirely sure what to expect with this version of the age-old story. Any kind of subtlety that Besson used to have as a director was virtually thrown out the window years ago. This could easily be a fun vampire adventure. It has already released in parts of Europe (and on Amazon UK), and releases in the US on December 22nd, and also somehow February 6th, 2026?
