Charlie and I sat down initially for a meeting in which we looked at various vampire films, adaptations of Dracula and TV series in order to give us some inspiration. We didn’t want to fall into the trap of writing something that included every vampire trope under the sun, but we did want to ensure that certain aspects of vampire lore were included as we know that, by and large, our audience would expect it…
An early decision that we made was to call the Englishman in the story Jonathan Harker. It was pretty clear to us (although you are more than welcome to argue otherwise) that the protagonist of the story was Harker himself on the earlier part of his journey to meet Dracula. This allowed us to draw reference from how Harker is written in the main novel and also how he is portrayed on screen (interesting Keanu Reeves accent aside). It also meant that we were able to add nods to Mina in the form of a photograph in Harker’s journal. The journal is a key part of the novel and we make multiple references to it in our version of Dracula’s Guest.
Although we chose to keep some of the dialogue from the original source intact, much of it has been created for our film adaptation. The crossroads sequence, for example, has been extended to include more information from Johann on the origins of Walpurgis Nacht and the superstitions of the town. We hope this will be a truly chilling sequence that sets up the terrors awaiting Harker on his ill-advised travels.
Speaking of chilling, after Charlie and I were happy with a draft (a process that involved Charlie going away and writing, editing, feeding back, writing again and editing again, etc.) we handed the script over to Liam to add a bit of SuperFreak flavour. Liam can write a scare better than anyone I know, so he was tasked with adding to the interior of the tomb sequence to make the most of the Countess. We hope this will be a memorable sequence and will really set up the literally explosive action that follows.
