Netflix announced that it will launch a new original series based on Konami's Castlevania franchise within the year.
The new show was revealed as a part of a slate of new premiere date reveals, though no specific date was announced for when Castlevania Season 1, Part 1 will arrive.
Castlevania On Netflix
According to the official description by Netflix, the series will be a dark medieval fantasy that features the video game franchise's Belmont clan, with the show to follow "the last surviving member of the disgraced Belmont clan, trying to save Eastern Europe from extinction at the hand of Vlad Dracula Tepe himself."
Frederator Studios will be behind the animated series, with comic book icon Warren Ellis as the writer. Ellis will also be the show's executive producer alongside Adi Shankar, Fred Seibert, and Kevin Kolde. The series is listed as a four-part season, with episodes to run for about 30 minutes each. Ellis has reportedly already finished writing Season 1 of the show.
In an interview with Shankar, IGN confirmed that the series will be an adaptation of the video game Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, initially released in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System before being added to the Nintendo Wii U Virtual Console. The classic game followed Trever Belmont on his mission to stop Dracula from taking over Europe in the 1400s, with Dracula's son Alucard fighting alongside the vampire hunter.
Shankar could not reveal more details about the show's plot, but he did state that the series will be "done in the vein of Game of Thrones."
"[The series is] going to be R-rated as f***," said Shankar, revealing the amount of violence that viewers can expect from the animated series. This information confirms the interview from 2015, when he said that the show will be the first animated series from America that will cater to adults. At the time, Shankar said that the inspirations for the art design of the animated series for Castlevania are Young Justice, Ghost in the Shell, and Akira.
Shankar, on his Facebook page, revealed that in addition to Season 1 of the show being released within the year, the second season will arrive in 2018.
Netflix News
The launch of a Castlevania animated series will further propel the popularity of Netflix, especially with Shanker's promise that it will be "the best f*****g video game adaptation" that will be released.
Last month, Netflix revealed that in the last quarter of 2016, it was able to add 7.1 million subscribers to the service, increasing the user base to nearly 94 million and sending the company's stocks on an extended trading rally by over 8 percent. The company added that it booked an income of $2.48 billion for the quarter, meeting analyst projections of an income of $2.47 billion for the last quarter of 2016.
Netflix said that it will spend $6 billion on content for the year, with the streaming service having an impressive lineup for the year that includes A Series of Unfortunate Events, Santa Clarita Diet, Marvel's Iron Fist, and Season 2 of Stranger Things.
