Nicholas Hoult to star in Dracula spin-off from Lego Movie director

Nicholas Hoult is set to star in Renfield, a new movie about Dracula's henchman, Deadline reports.

In Bram Stoker's iconic gothic novel, R.M. Renfield is an inmate at an asylum – thought to be experiencing delusions, he was actually a servant of Dracula. The Lego Movie director Chris McKay is helming a modern-day retelling of the story based on an original story by Robert Kirkman, the comic book writer best known for co-creating The Walking Dead. Ryan Ridley, who's previously written for TV shows like Community and Rick and Morty, penned the movie's script, so we can expect plenty of laughs – and plenty of violence, too, according to Kirkman.

"It's a story about him being Dracula's henchman and how shitty a job that is," he recently told the Fat Man Beyond podcast. "It's a fun, extremely violent comedy because I've got a crutch, and it's violence."

Leading man Hoult is currently starring in the Hulu comedy drama series The Great from The Favourite screenwriter Tony McNamara. He plays Peter III of Russia alongside Elle Fanning, who plays the woman set to become Catherine the Great. On the big screen, he last appeared in the action thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead, co-starring Angelina Jolie and Jon Bernthal.

He's the next in a long line of actors to play the vampire's servant – Renfield was played by Tom Waits in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 take on the vampire tale and Samuel Barnett in the final season of Penny Dreadful, while Mark Gatiss portrayed the character in the 2020 BBC miniseries Dracula. 

While we wait for Renfield to arrive in theaters, check out our list of the best Netflix movies that you can stream right now.