Last week, Universal Pictures dropped the trailer for the upcoming horror-comedy Renfield, revealing an eerie yet simultaneously silly look for Nicolas Cage’s portrayal of the iconic Count Dracula. Recently, Cage sat down to talk with Collider about the role, saying that he took inspiration from Christopher Lee’s Dracula, although he had “a lot of help” from costume designers and makeup artists:

Christopher Lee portrayed Dracula in several films throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and was well-known for his roles as Saruman in The Lord of The Rings trilogy and Count Dooku in Star Wars. Cage’s homage is accurate, sporting the same slicked-back hair, inhuman fangs, and dramatic demeanor in the few glimpses of him we get in the trailer.

“Well, I had a lot of help. There were a ton of super-talented people on that movie that helped design the look. We wanted it to be more homage, more Christopher Lee. I favored Christopher Lee as Dracula and I liked his kind of sixties hairdo, but the wardrobe, the costume, and no, I didn’t come up with the idea for the rings. That all came out of a wardrobe. They came in with all that. Maybe they sent something in me that I would like that, but that was really their contribution.”

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Renfield is Nicholas Hoult’s Movie, Dracula not Getting Much Screen Time

     Universal Pictures

While Nicolas Cage’s Dracula will no doubt be iconic, there’s a reason the movie is called Renfield and not Dracula. It’s less about the vampire lord and more about his assistant, named Renfield, who is played by Nicholas Hoult. Renfield is trying to quit his job of providing Dracula with blood, and aptly refers to this as a “toxic relationship” in the trailer. Cage explains why he’s not the star of the movie, although he did have enough time to develop his own take on Dracula:

While Nicholas Hoult may be lesser known than Nicolas Cage, he’s by no means inexperienced, having played in dozens of films including the X-Men franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road, Tolkien, and The Menu. He also had a starring role in Warm Bodies, in which he plays a zombie falling in love with a human, so he’s no stranger to modern takes on classic monsters. This isn’t the first time Hoult has acted alongside Cage, either, having portrayed Cage’s son in The Weather Man in 2005.

“To me, because the movie’s really not about me, Dracula rather, I don’t have a lot of screen time. It’s really Nick Hoult’s movie, and it’s about Renfield. I didn’t have the time, like the two-hour narrative to really dig deep into Dracula’s pathos per se. It’s not that. But I did have enough screen time to be able to try to develop a pop-art style to the character that hopefully will be a nice contribution to the other performers that have done it, that have had their take on this legendary character in both literature and cinema.”

Renfield will release on April 14th, 2023, via Universal Pictures. Directed by Chris McKay of Robot Chicken fame, it stars Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz, and Adrian Martinez.