Buried deep in the darkness of the ever expanding list of 2017 announcements from Netflix is a video game adaptation. That video game is the vampire slaying Castlevania. While the details are very slim and conflicting (Some sites are saying it’s a live action series, others an animated series.), it’s just good to see that video games are going to get the “Marvel treatment” from Netflix since they have done amazing things with properties like Luke Cage, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Voltron: Legendary Defender, Skylanders Academy and more.
So Here’s What We Know about Castlevania: The Series
- The series will be produced by Adi Shankar, the producer behind Dredd and the popular Power/Rangers short film (As seen in the video above)
- Legendary comic writer Warren Ellis is on board as head writer and also as a producer on the series. Ellis wrote such hits as Gen13, Transmetropolitan & The Authority along with working on DC & Marvel comic titles.
- Shankar said on his Facebook page in 2016 that “I’m producing a super violent Castlevania mini-series with my homies Fred Seibert and Kevin Klonde. It’s going to be dark, satirical, and after a decade of propaganda it will flip the vampire sub-genre on its head.”
- The series will be a mature rated series, pushing an R Rating
- Frederator Studios, the animation studio behind Adventure Time is involved. (So yes, this will be animated)
- According to Netflix’s official description of the series, Castlevania will focus on the game franchise’s Belmont clan, as it follows “the last surviving member of the disgraced Belmont clan, trying to save Eastern Europe from extinction at the hand of Vlad Dracula Tepe himself.” Possibly making this an adaptation of Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse.
- Netflix also revealed Castlevania Season 1, Part 1 will be arriving this year, though no specific date was revealed. Netflix’s website lists the series as a four-part season, with each episode running for approximately 30 minutes.
- Shankar also discussed the project’s current state on his Facebook page, saying Season 1 will come this year and that a second season, which was not mentioned in Netflix’s announcement, will follow in 2018.
While there seems to be a lot of behind the scenes information about the upcoming Castlevania series out there, I will admit that we should take all of it with a grain of salt outside of anything confirmed by Netflix themselves. However, it’s a great to see that not only are we getting a Castlevania series, and not only that, but a MATURE animated series. Thank you Netflix for stepping outside the “cartoons are for kids only” box and thinking about the more adult audience that this series is going to be aimed at. All I ask is that it’s better than the last time we saw a Belmont in a cartoon… Damn you Captain N!!!
