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Producers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman recently spoke to Crave about the forthcoming Van Helsing, which is (no shock) a reboot.
“Well, I don’t want to give away too much, because we are actually at the very beginning of talking about what to do with it. But I do feel like the Van Helsing that Anthony Hopkins plays in [Bram Stoker’s] Dracula is sort of the parody version of it, and the Van Helsing that Hugh Jackman played was obviously in a different place as well,” they explain. “I think that these kinds of movies have evolved a lot since then. You know, The Dark Knight was a major, major corner-turning moment in the way that genre and superhero stories could be told. Really grounded in reality. Really grounded in really cool things. That’s what I’d like to do without sacrificing the fantasy element. We aspired to do that as well on Trek, you know, keep it “real.” That’s such a different franchise than Batman, but that’s really what we wanted to do. And we’d love to do that with Van Helsing.”
The duo aren’t saying that the original was a parody, but they’re correct in stating that it feels like it. The hammy nature of Universal’s 2004 film, directed by Stephen Somers, is as cheeseball filled as they come. Approaching the franchise from a real place begins with the script and ends with the effects work. Hopefully they can work together and deliver a epic creature feature that we deserve?
