Karyn KusamaPhoto: Kevin Winter (Getty Images for Deadline Hollywood)
Karyn Kusama’s Mina Harker film is a huge blow to Blumhouse and Miramax fans of The Dark Universe and Jennifer’s Body. Unfortunately, the film was weeks from the start of production before it was unceremoniously dumped. Per , Miramax left the project citing “creative differences,” and we’ve never heard it before. Miramax’s sudden exit effectively torpedoed “what would have been a modern interpretation of the myth”.
Canonically, Mina Harker is the distraught and frankly very concerned fiancé of Dracula’s attorney, Jonathan Harker. Blindspotting’s Jasmine Cephas Jones would have played the role of Mina in Kusama’s version, which shifted the action from Transylvania to today’s late-night Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the real tragedy is that we’ll never see Dracula take Harker to SQIRL for a very late brunch.
While the proverbial unplugging is a hit for fans, Kusama has been at a creative peak of late. The fan base for her Megan Fox as a succubus film, Jennifer’s Body, has only grown in recent years. More recently, she directed the pilot for Yellowjackets and served as executive producer on the series.
Mina Harker has appeared in numerous adaptations of Dracula, including Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version starring Winona Ryder as Mina Harker. The character’s last screen appearance was in the original Dark Universe launch pad, Dracula: Untold, a movie that was definitely released and one we all talk about all the time.
Of course, Mina Harker wasn’t the only Dracula spin-off in the works. Universal is releasing its Nicolas Cage-directed Renfield film next year. Unfortunately, as fun as it would be to explain the differences between Blumhouse and Universal’s respective monster-based cinematic universes around the Christmas tree this year, we’ll never get the chance to do so. On the other hand, Blumhouse still has a Wolfman and Invisible Man 2 in the works, so maybe living the dream is different than Dracula.
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