Dread Central is reporting that Paul WS Anderson, proud owner of the Anti-Life Equation As Applied to Movies, is leaving the long-gestating adaptation of Castlevania, a video game about killing Dracula with a whip. This comes as a big shock to me, because when I spoke to Jeremy Bolt, Paul’s producer and buddy, on the Mexico City set of Resident Evil: Extinction last summer, he seemed pretty gung-ho about Castlevania. Also, I recently spoke to a source on the business side of things who fully expected an announcement to be made about Castlevania being greenlit quite soon.
Maybe it still is, but it will be without Paul. Dread Central says that he’ll instead focus on his remake of Death Race 2000, which is a shame – who cares who directs yet another movie based on a not very good video game versus who directs a remake of a satirical classic that still works perfectly 30 years later. And just in case you thought that maybe Death Race would bring out something new in Paul, I also spoke to Bolt about that film:
“We’ve basically taken the idea of reality television and extended it twenty years,” Bolt said. “It’s definitely a comment on society and particularly on reality television, but it’s not as much of a parody or a satire as the original. It’s more straight-ahead.”
I hated what he had to say back then (read my original reaction here) and I hate it now. Somebody please option a new video game for Anderson to make.