Dracula Spin-Off Movie Renfield To Star X-Men's Nicholas Hoult

Nicholas Hoult will star in the upcoming Universal monster movie Renfield. As reported by Collider, X-Men star Hoult will play the title character, best known as Dracula's henchman.

Renfield will be directed by Chris McKay, who helmed The Lego Batman Movie and the recent Amazon sci-fi film The Tomorrow War. The script has been written by Ryan Ridley (Rick and Morty) from a story by Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman. Hoult played Hank McCoy in four X-Men movies and also appeared in Mad Max: Fury Road, Those Who Wish Me Dead, and the TV shows Skins and The Great.

Renfield is one of several movies based on classic horror characters being developed by Universal. It was first announced in November 2019, with Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman) attached as director. The character appeared in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula and has been played by a variety of actors over the years, including Tom Waits in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 Dracula adaptation and Klaus Kinski in a 1970 version.

In a recent interview on Kevin Smith's Fat Man Beyond podcast, Kirkman suggested that the film will be a horror comedy. "We're doing this cool movie for Universal that's a focus on Renfield," he said, via ComingSoon. "It's a story about him being Dracula's henchman and how s****y a job that is. It's a fun, extremely violent comedy."

Universal's development of various monster movies follows the success of last year's The Invisible Man--others include The Invisible Woman, to be directed by Elizabeth Banks, and The Wolfman, starring Ryan Gosling. This is the studio's second attempt to launch a series of films based on its classic horror properties, the first being the ill-fated Dark Universe.