Paul Anderson to Head Castlevania Film 54
Via 1up, the news on the Coming Soon site is not good. Paul W.S. Anderson is to film a Castlevania movie, beginning next year. From the article: "Anderson's script spans many time periods but mostly takes place in 15th century Transylvania. It represents a fresh take on the much-filmed Dracula legend, mining back to its genesis in the story of the Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler. 'You could almost call this movie Dracula Begins,' Anderson said. 'It's an action/horror project in the vein of Underworld and Blade, and hopefully it will be a big franchise for us, Rogue co-president Andrew Rona said." But ... Underworld and Blade are nothing like Castlevania.
Re:Mining back to the 15th century my ass (Score:3, Interesting)
In the regions where he was Voivode, he was called Dracula (as you pointed out) which means son of the dragon (or son of the devil. the dragon was a symbol to represent the devil).
His father spent a large amount of time in Germany during his (the father's) adolescence and had joined a holy order of knights called the Order of the Dragon. Their symbol was a dragon broken over a cross, which they wore on a pendant. When he returned to Wallachia, he wore the pendant and it was the source of the name Dracul.
The order of knights were created to fight against the insurgence of the Turkish armies into Christendom.
Vlad Dracula is mentioned in Pope Pius' (i think. i might have the wrong pope on this) memoirs as being one of the greatest defenders of Christendom in his time.
During his reign, Dracula had an ambivalent relationship with the German merchants who would come trade with his citizens. He felt they were ripping off the peasants and threw many of them out of the country. They, in turn, created a smear campaign to try to get him removed from rulership. All the woodcuts depicting Vlad eating lunch in a field of impaled corpses and many of the stories that paint him as a raving, impaling lunatic originated in Germany.
He did impale many people, which lent the stories an air of truth, though. (impalement was a form of punishment that he learned from the turks when he was imprisoned by them as a child/young adult).