Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners have started filming their long-gestating horror film The Last Voyage of The Demeter, the project has been in the works for twenty years and is based on the brief excerpt from Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel covering the iconic vampire’s bloody journey to London.
Zak Olkewicz (Bullet Train, Fear Street) has written the script, which is based on a single chapter, “The Captain’s Log,” from Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel Dracula, which tells the story of the Russian schooner, Demeter, which was charted to carry private cargo (twenty four unmarked wooden creates) from Carpathia to London. The film will detail the strange events that befell the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a terrifying presence onboard the ship. When it finally arrived near Whitby Harbour, it was a derelict. There was no trace of the crew.
Director Andre Ovredal (Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark) announced on Twitter that filming on the horror flick began shooting on June 26 at Babelsberg Studio just outside of Berlin, Germany. The studio is currently being used for John Wick: Chapter 4 alongside recently high-profile studio projects such as The Matrix 4 and Tom Holland’s Uncharted film.
The post also confirms our report that Ovredal would be reuniting with cinematographer Roman Osin (Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark).
The film’s cast has grown with a wave of new additions mentioned by The Hollywood Reporter yesterday. Those new names joining Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton, Kong: Skull Island, The Walking Dead) include Game of Thrones alums Liam Cunningham (Clash of The Titans, The Guard) as the Demeter’s captain and Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale, Black Narcissus), David Dastmalchian (Ant-Man, The Suicide Squad, Blade Runner 2049), longtime creature actor Javier Botet (It, Game of Thrones, Slender Man, Alien: Covenant, Crimson Peak, The Conjuring 2) is set to play Dracula, Jon Jon Briones (Ratched), Stefan Kapicic (Deadpool, Deadpool 2), Nikolai Nikolaeff, Woody Norman, Martin Furulund and Chris Walley.
The Last Voyage of The Demeter has been around for ages with previous directors such as David Slade (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night, Hannibal, American Gods, Black Mirror) and Neil Marshall (Game of Thrones, Westworld, Hellboy, Lost In Space) attaching themselves to only exit. Viggo Mortensen, Noomi Rapace, Jude Law, and Ben Kingsley were reportedly once involved at various stages.
It’s unknown when the film will debut as Amblin recently made a deal with Netflix to fund and distribute original films. There is a good shot that Demeter ends up landing at Netflix.
SOURCE: ANDRE OVREDAL & THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
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