As the vampire craze slowly declines, it will take some truly intriguing attachments to get our attention these days. The Playlist brings us an update of just such a project: Jim Jarmusch‘s proposed vampire film, which will star Tilda Swinton, Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender.
It’s not a huge surprise that Fassbender or Wasikowska, two of the most in-demand actors around would be eager to jump onboard a production helmed by such a respected auteur as Jarmusch, and Swinton is known for choosing projects that veer from mainstream vehicles like Michael Clayton (for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar) to the brilliant, Italian-language I Am Love.
Alongside the Neil Jordan vampire project Byzantium, Jarmusch’s film, described as a “crypto-vampire love story” (whatever that means) and set in Detroit and Tangiers, sounds like one to look forward to. It already features John Hurt in a “featured role,” and this is all we’re getting out of Jarmusch for the time being: “I’ve been imagining this film for years. I can’t wait to now realise it with these remarkable collaborators.” Veteran production Jeremy Thomas (Naked Lunch, The Last Emperor) has Jarmusch’s back, and German producer Reinhard Brundig is also aboard the production.
Vampire schtick has been split between the stuff of teeny-bopper CW series (The Vampire Diaries) and safe-as-milk franchises (Twilight), and hard, mature treatments of the genre like HBO’s True Blood and the brilliant Let The Right One In (remade here, successfully, as Matt Reeves‘s Let Me In). A project like this in the hands of someone like Jarmusch may feel new, but Werner Herzog had his own go at a remake of Nosferatu in 1979, with Klaus Kinski starring as a very different Dracula than we’re familiar with. At lest we forget, Tony Scott made his own 80’s time capsule, post-modern vampire tale The Hunger in 1983, starring David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and a young Susan Sarandon.
Veteran screenwriter William Goldman once observed that there’s a good and practical reason why Hollywood will always love vampire movies: it’s potentially the story of their careers. Birth, death, resurrection. Like it or not, they’re never going away.
Jarmusch’s vampire story will film sometime in early 2012 in Germany, Morocco and Tangiers, provided that Fassbender can pencil this in.
Can Jim Jarmusch do something new with this genre? Are you a fan of the deadpan auteur?