Is “Otaku-Man.” Geezer, give it up. You’re not writing the film, and I’m not “having trouble.” You get to wear The Turd Cape Of Shame™ for the rest of the week.

(The Turd Cape Of Shame™ is a No-Prize issued to Blog Nemeses.)

– W

Why a trilogy?

I spent a month or more pacing around the central problem of this film. Which is the format. 80 minutes. I knew, coming on board, that this was the format, and I liked it, because it was a technical challenge. But Kevin knew, when I came on board, that I wanted to write a film, not some by-the-numbers videogame adaptation. I wanted it to have some depth to it. I wanted to explore the environment of medieval Wallachia somewhat, I wanted the ordinary people to speak, I wanted a hint of feudal politics. And I wanted a vein of strangeness to it (also, an element of springpunky prochronism, which I’ll get to later).

(Also, people getting whipped. With Devo playing in the background.)

So what, in real terms, does an 80-minute runtime mean? It’s a third of THE GODFATHER II. Half a SPIDER-MAN 3. The shortest cut of Woo’s THE KILLER is still a hundred minutes or so. It’s a hair under two episodes of a standard American network tv drama.

That’s not a whole hell of a lot. And while I could have gone balls-out and crammed the beats of the source material into the film, going from introducing Trevor to beating Dracula inside 80 minutes… I don’t think it would have made a very good film. In fact, what I found was that stopping a third of the way in, while obviously not telling the entire story within the source material, actually made a better film. Trevor to Sypha to Alucard carries a solid classical three-act structure, in fact, with actual resolution at the end. It’s a self-contained film. The film obviously has the intention of a sequel, but doesn’t require it to be a whole thing: it resolves its own plots and themes.

A trilogy lets us address the entirety of the source material, the uberplot. Each third of the source material has its own three-part structure lurking inside it. And if, you know, everything goes to hell and we don’t get to do the trilogy? We’ve still got the best version of the film there, and it doesn’t demand the presence of the other two parts for it to work as its own thing. It would just like them.

– W

Kevin and I have had the conversation about voice actors, yes. American actors? British actors? Eastern European actors? Any of the above doing Eastern European accents?

My own preference is for British actors, but that’s because I’m English. And besides, you know the American rule — any accent not American must automatically be English. HBO didn’t bat an eyelid at ensuring that everyone in ROME spoke with an English accent (aside from the slaves, heh). Note how HBO’s DEADWOOD cast an Englishman as the hero of the Wild West.

(Yes, Al Swearengen was the hero. Anyone who disagrees with me is no longer Human and must turn their membership in at the door. The Walking Wombshit Club is just down the road, watching reruns of THE OC and weeping and masturbating at the same time. They’ll take you.)

There’s also the Sean Connery Effect to take into account. The Sean Connery Effect states that an accent that isn’t American can automatically convey any ethnicity the script requires. Russian? Egyptian? Arabian? The Edinburgh accent can be any of these things, usually accompanied by a Thespian Hairpiece.

The thing about using actors from across Europe is that… and this is something that often seems poorly understood… there is no single Eastern European accent. You can have all kinds of fun watching the otherwise pretty good CHILDREN OF DUNE, which did use actors from many countries, and trying to work out how a culture that seems to be about thirty miles wide produced twelve different bloody accents. It’s like the United Nations formed a desert gang. (Run by scene-chewing English nearly-man Steven Berkoff.)

If it were up to me, I’d wrestle things down to the point where there were only two or three different accents in the film, just for internal logic.

But, of course, it’s not up to me.

There’s another question from comments answered. Aren’t you glad I’m spreading my wisdom here for you? Like spreading manure, yes.

– W

This production blog was started as a way for all Castlevania fans to get a behind-the-scenes, inside look, at the production of the movie and to provide a forum for discussion about it. It is a place where you can have a dialogue amongst yourselves and also with the producers, writer, artists, director, etc. of the movie. We understand that you are passionate about Castlevania and want to hear your thoughts and opinions. If you have something that you want to say, want the production team to take your opinion seriously, and want to see your posts here, make your point in an intelligent, respectful, manner. Otherwise, the only ones to who will get to see and hear what you have to say are you, and well…you.

Kevin

One big story, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, told across three movies. Grant is not in the first movie. From Warren’s earlier post Cutting The Pirate, here it is again -

When he does turn up, I’ll probably use the alternate spelling of Grant DiNesti.

No, you’re not getting it.

We want to do three films.

– W

One thing that I don’t think has been made clear thus far: the CASTLEVANIA film is not, as it were, for children.

What brought me onboard, beyond the word CASTLEVANIA, was producer Kevin Kolde telling me upfront that he did not want this to be a kids’ movie. The freedom of d2DVD meant that we could tell the story without filters, in whatever way we deemed best.

I said something like “thank fuck for that.” Not only because I basically have no manners, but because animation on tv has a shedload of weeiiirrrdd rules. I’ve been involved in tv animation for the US a little bit — developed a series that didn’t go anywhere, wrote an episode of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED — and had a taste of that. I’m not saying I wouldn’t do it again, but I’m very well aware of what I’d be letting myself in for, and the idea of writing 80 concurrent minutes that had to adhere to Standards & Practises just makes me shudder.

CASTLEVANIA is, therefore, Not For Children.

What does this mean in practise? Does this mean blood up the walls, people hitting each other with heavy sacks full of abortions, the leathery flap and unf of vampire skullfucking and seemingly unending scenes of tentacle rape?

Well… what’s it worth to you? Let’s see some money. The line forms over there on the right.

What use is a pirate in a landlocked country anyway?

(Wallachia was cut off from the Black Sea by the Ottoman Empire by 1420 or thereabouts)

Yes. I cut Grant DaNasty out of the film. The reasons were:

* Grant DaNasty is a stupid name that I cannot take seriously. (When he does turn up, I’ll probably use the alternate spelling of Grant DiNesti.)

* I only have 80 minutes. And in that 80 minutes I need to set up the backdrop, the history, the themes and five major characters to tell the story I want to tell. Because this isn’t going to be the usual kind of videogame adaptation, the kind that just transposes the least challenging parts of gameplay to the screen. This is going to be an actual goddamn film with an actual goddamn story. But I only have 80 minutes. To try and shoehorn Grant in there, when I’m already trying to create the space for Trevor, Sypha and Alucard to breathe and fill the screen (not even mentioning Dracula, Lisa or the Bishop for the moment)…no. I’d end up doing a bad job on all of them, and giving up whole chunks of the plot. At which point you might as well just call Uwe Boll, you know?

* Seriously, what use is a pirate on dry land? “Avast, ye swabs, and push me fecking cart! Arrr!” No. Just no.

* Did you see that thing I did in the first reason there?

Sypha Belnades is in the film.

Grant DaNasty is not.

So… am I going to get lynched?

Explanations forthcoming.

My name’s Warren Ellis. I mostly write graphic novels and comics series. My first prose novel, CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, is out this summer, I’ve written a little bit of animation before, and I’ve been story consultant and cut-scene writer on a few videogames. And, until they fire me, I’m the screenwriter for the CASTLEVANIA D2DVD film.

The film is, of course, set in Wallachia in 1476. We’ve worked with Koji Igarashi to get the film solidly inside the Castlevania timeline, and he’s approved everything I came up with, including some new embroidering to the timeline. To make it work as a film, I had to introduce new backstory, and I went through five drafts of the premise and three of the full outline to get the material where IGA wanted it. He remains absolutely passionate about Castlevania. After eight rewrites of pre-production material, I remain absolutely passionate about beating the crap out of IGA in a dark alleyway one day.

– Warren Ellis