Corona | Coming Attractions

Sam Worthington has been minted. Sure, Terminator Salvation didn't perform as well as expected but the movie that's guaranteed that the Australian actor will be making action movies for at least a few more years is Avatar. Just as Leonardo DiCaprio if starring in the lead male role in the highest-grossing picture of all-time catapults your movie star career.

Two days ago the Latino Review website received an insider scoop that Worthington was attached to play Vlad the Impaler in Dracula Year Zero, a reimagining of the Dracula mythos that was in development with Universal Pictures. According to LR's mole, Universal brass had to make a decsion on Monday as to which summer 2011 tentpole they would greenlight. The scooper said that the movie studio had 14 possible projects that they could pull the trigger on, one of which was the Dracula Year Zero one, to be directed by I, Robot's Alex Proyas.

Enter the Hollywood Reporter today which confirms Latino Review's scoop and also adds more dimension to what the logline is for Dracula Year Zero. THR's write-up describes the story of the movie as about "depict[ing] Dracula as a flawed hero in a tragic love story set in a dark age of magic and war." It's also an origin piece so we'll come to understand why Vlad, who ruled the Transylvanian region five hundred years ago and became infamous as a ruler that impaled his opponents, came to be cursed as one of the living dead.

The spec screenplay was written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. Michael De Luca is producing. And Avatar is still making money.