Castlevania gets Netflix show from ‘Planetary’ scribe Warren Ellis

Hollywood is determined to figure out how the hell to adapt a video game, and now Netflix is tapping Dracula to have a go itself.

Castlevania is getting the Netflix Original Series treatment, according to a post from television and film producer Adi Shankar. This production will get two seasons with the first launching on the subscription video-streaming service later this year. Season two will debut in 2018. So now you have another reason other than Stranger Things season two to keep that Netflix account active this year.

Shankar promised that the show will break the trend of crappy gaming adaptations to film and television, which most recently brought fans the miserably received Assassin’s Creed starring Michael Fassbender. That film has an a rating of 18 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Shankar bases his confidence not just on Netflix’s track record for producing beloved television but also on the revelation that renowned comic and novel writer Warren Ellis penned both seasons of Castlevania. Ellis is likely best known for his critically acclaimed graphic novels The Authority, Transmetropolitan, and  Planetary.

Castlevania is one of gaming’s longest-running franchises. It originally debuted for the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States in 1986. Its publisher, Konami, has since reinvented several times for various platforms. The most notable entry in the series, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, debuted for PlayStation in 1997 and added deep role-playing and loot mechanics to an exploration platformer that borrowed heavily from Nintendo’s Super Metroid.

When it comes to its narrative, Castlevania is about a family of vampire slayers called the Belmonts who are doomed to fight Dracula, king of the vampires, throughout all of time. The games have taken that lore seriously, but fans have never had to delve too deeply into it to get enjoyment from the games, which rely more heavily on gameplay and atmosphere.