Chris McKay talks Renfield, Nightwing, and The Tomorrow War sequels

Chris McKay has a lot on his plate. The Tomorrow War reaches Amazon within the next few weeks, and then the director's moving onto Renfield, a modern-day story about Dracula’s assistant.

“Horror genre stuff, but a lot of action," McKay tells SFX Magazine while describing the upcoming movie in the new issue, headlined by The Tomorrow War. "Basically it’s a movie about co-dependency.”

Then there's the currently mooted Nightwing movie that the filmmaker hopes will still get made. "Nightwing, to me, is a character that I've wanted to make a movie about since I was a kid," he says. "I love Batman and Robin and I was fortunate to grow up with the Marv Wolfman Nightwing stories. I got to be a kid who saw Robin grow up into being Nightwing.

"I have a very pulpy, clear concept for the Nightwing movie that can exist independent of whatever they're doing in DC, or it can be inserted into it, but I'm just waiting for them. They're making a Matt Reeves movie now and possibly more than one. And so I'm just waiting for them to kind of get to a point where they feel like they can add Nightwing and hopefully they still see me as the filmmaker."

While McKay may have a little time freed up following the cancelation of The Lego Batman sequel, he also has a Jonny Quest adaptation in development, and then there's the matter of potential The Tomorrow War sequels.

The movie, which reaches Amazon's streaming service on July 2, centers on Chris Pratt's Dan Forester, who lives in a world where time-travelers from the year 2051 are employing people from the 30 years in the past to help fight an alien invasion. The cast also includes J. K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, and Yvonne Strahovski.

“The amount of designs that we didn’t use – whether it’s the pilots that you see briefly or other versions of the White Spikes – there’s a lot more story to tell,” McKay continues. “With time travel, anything’s possible. You can go into the history of the White Spikes, how they got there, and who’s behind them. I really hope that we get a chance to make a sequel because there’s still some money left on the table as far as the story goes, and I’d love to return to it.”

You can check out the full interview with the team behind The Tomorrow War in the current issue of SFX Magazine, which features the Amazon movie on the cover. For more from SFX, make sure to sign up to the newsletter, sending all the latest exclusives straight to your inbox.

Jack Shepherd is the former Senior Entertainment Editor of GamesRadar. Jack used to work at The Independent as a general culture writer before specializing in TV and film for the likes of GR+, Total Film, SFX, and others. You can now find Jack working as a freelance journalist and editor.