“It’s going to be dark, satirical, and after a decade of propaganda it will flip the vampire sub-genre on its head.” – Adi Shankar
American film producer and director Adi Shankar, who’s known for The Grey, The Lone Survivor, or the more recent Power/Rangers Unauthorized from his Bootleg Universes shorts, announced on facebook that he would be working with Fred Seibert and Kevin Kolde of Frederator Studios (Adventure Time, Fairly OddParents, etc.) to create an animated short-series based on Konami’s Castlevania game franchise.
According to an interview conducted by Collider, Shankar reveals more information into what the mini-series will entail. Firstly, the animated series will be based off of the 1989/1990 Famicom/NES game Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. Unlike most of the other Castlevania games, this one featured three new playable characters including the debut of Dracula’s son, Alucard.
The producer also noted that he would include easter eggs that only people who have played the games would know in addition to using the synthesized heavy metal electric guitar quality that the earlier games were notorious for having.
When asked what kind of violence or gore the mini-series would have, Shankar replied
“There will be a lot. The goal is to bring hard hitting anime to the America and be America’s first animated series for adults.”
Shankar will be taking influences from classic animes like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Ninja Scroll as well as the recently cancelled Young Justice.
Having a larger cast of characters to work with is probably why Dracula’s Curse was chosen over other titles; as it would be a more interesting feature to watch four personalities take on a menacing threat instead of one. If your wondering whether or not this mini-series will be as bloody and violent as it is suggested, let’s just say that every other work that’s associated with Adi Shankar has been rated R and does everything it can to justify it’s rating. Hopefully this will be an adaption that can be appreciated by both longtime fans of Castlevania and non-gamers alike.
The year is 1476, and Count Dracula has started to ravage Europe with an army of monsters. The Belmont family of vampire hunters, once exiled from Wallachia, are called into action by the Church. They feared the Belmonts’ “super-human” power, but with Dracula menacing to swallow Europe in darkness, they are left with no choice but to call Trevor Belmont, current wielder of the Vampire Killer Whip. -Wikipedia