Karyn Kusama talks about why she thinks her Dracula movie was stabbed to the heart

In 2020, director Karyn Kusama was hired directing a new version of Dracula for Blumhouse Productions. Like it The invisible man for that, the Dracula movie would be set in modern times: a chance for Universal to reboot its perpetually doomed Monsterverse.

But Kusama would put a twist on it Dracula. First of all, the movie would be called Mina Harker instead, and focus on the female lead from Bram Stoker’s original novel, with Jasmine Cephas Jones tapped to play her. Considering Kusama’s legacy of films about complicated and powerful women, such as Jennifer’s bidj, Aeon FluxAnd Girls fightKusama’s take on Dracula would have given the old story an interesting touch and perspective.

But just three weeks before filming began, Kusama’s was Dracula movie was canceled. And she’s pretty sure she knows why.

“I would say that the Dracula movie I made was not a simple monster movie,” Kusama shared with Polygon in a video interview. “Maybe that was the problem. It was very much rooted in the monsters that start in people’s homes. What would make it distinctive was that Dracula was more than an evil force. He was a man. And that, in some ways, is both the raison d’être and the obstacle. It was very difficult to get the film made. And even though we were so close, three weeks after the shoot people lost their nerve. So what are you going to do?”

Mina Harker may not have been realized, but Kusama has been busy with television projects. She serves as executive producer Yellow jacketsand next up for her is the third season of AMC’s anthology series The terror, who directed the first two episodes in addition to her role as executive producer. This season is based on The devil in silver by Victor LaValle, which follows a man wrongly admitted to a psychiatric hospital who confronts a terrifying monster in the hallways night after night.

“It’s just a really, really beautiful story of, I think, systemic failure, personal and ethical failure and how that affects all of us,” Kusama says. “I’m really excited about it. It will be a challenge and it will be great.”

Ideally, Kusama hopes to return to films sooner or later, and she has a very specific idea of ​​what kind of film she wants to make next.

“I have to make personal films again,” she says. “That’s kind of where I really learn and bend and experiment and fail and try and all that. So that’s kind of what the next step is for me: figuring out what the next feature is going to be.

Image: Screen Gems/Courtesy Everett Collection

Her first film, Girls fight, will be added to the Criterion Collection on May 28. It follows a young Brooklyn woman, played by Michelle Rodriguez in her first role, who decides to channel her aggression into boxing. Since the film’s release in 2000, both Kusama and Rodriguez’s careers have developed in very different ways. Rodriguez regularly headlines big action blockbusters and has a legacy as Letty Ortiz in the Fast and the Furious films. But Kusama specifically stays away from those types of big franchises.

“It’s not really my vibe. And a lot of that just has to do with the idea that you have to create something that is part of a big entity with a lot of history and a lot of relationships that people already bring to the characters in the world. she says. “For that reason, I’m not sure I would be the best candidate for that type of work. But never say never, I guess!”