It seems the popularity of vampires would be winding down with the over-saturation of the market, but Hollywood is moving away from your modern vampire, as seen in Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries, and seems to be looking toward the past to keep the craze going. There has been a sudden explosion of projects based on the classic vampire, Dracula. Names ranging from Adam Sandler to Park Chan-Wook are involved in some kind of story about the classical bloodsucker.

According to Deadline, Sony has purchased a pitch from writer Jason Keller that will tell Dracula’s origin story, with Joe Roth and Palak Patel set to produce. Sony would only admit that they intend to start a period franchise, and with Keller credited for the upcoming Snow White re-imagining Mirror Mirror, that might put two franchises on his plate.

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Building on the success of Avatar, the seemingly everywhere Sam Worthington has apparently already picked his next role: Dracula. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Worthington is currently in negotiations to star in director Alex Proyas’ vampire epic Dracula Year Zero for Universal and producer Michael De Luca.

The film, written by Matt Sazama and Buck Sharpless, will explore the origins of Dracula and his ties to Vlad the Impaler. It will reportedly portray the titular vampire as both demonic evil and tragic, flawed hero. The film currently has no start date and is still in development.

As a fan of Proyas’ previous work with The Crow and Dark City, I’m hopeful his take on Dracula will be equally as visually compelling and also feature interesting characters and situations. That said, the movie does sound a lot like Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version of Dracula, which featured Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder.

As for Worthington, I’m still not convinced that he’s the “next big thing” even as studios shove him in our faces more and more. I just don’t find him that interesting. No matter what, I guess we’ll find out how he handles Dracula when this film eventually hits theaters.