From Nintendo to the TV screen, Netflix is getting nostalgic by adapting the dark medieval fantasy video game series Castlevania to its streaming platform, starting by releasing a trailer outlining plenty of blood and gore visuals to wet our appetites.
According to U.S. Gamer, the animated series will make its debut on Netflix July 7, with producer Adi Shankar taking to Facebook to announce the streaming service’s plans to air the first season in 2017, with follow-up season two premiering in 2018. Netflix shows that the series will consist of a four-part season, with each episode running approximately 30 minutes each.
Shankar confirmed to IGN that the animated series will be an adaptation of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, delving into near-extinct Eastern Europe where the last surviving Belmont family member already under intense scrutiny, will try to defeat Vlad Dracula Tepe. “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,” Shankar wrote in a Facebook post back in 2015.
In addition to Fred Seibert (former Creative Director of MTV) and Kevin Kolde co-producing the series, animation will be done by Seibert’s Frederator Studios, working under Wow Unlimited Media Company. Warren Ellis (Justice League Unlimited) will serve as a writer.
The video game series is loosely based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula and pays homage to a number of iconic horror cinema characters including werewolves, the Grim Reaper, Medusa and of course, Count Dracula. The first video game in the series was released on the Family Computer Disk System console back in 1986, developed and published by Konami, and since then, has seen a number of releases on multiple gaming platforms.
Netflix and the Castlevania team are otherwise keeping quiet on most of the details regarding the series. But, Shankar is anticipating success with this project, telling IGN, “this is going to be the best f*****g video game adaptation we’ve had to date.”