The first season of Castlevania was met with great feedback when it aired on Netflix last year. So much so that, on launch day, the series got renewed. GamesIndustry.biz recently spoke with one of the show’s executive producers, Adi Shankar, about how the project came together and during the conversation, Shankar explained why a live-action adaptation wasn’t produced.
“It’s not that live-action was unilaterally not right, it was just the way that version was coming together,” Shankar said. “The star of Castlevania is Castlevania, first and foremost; it’s the characters. And the ecosystem has changed now, but back then the star system was still intact, so what mattered more to the greenlight committee than making a good film or faithful adaptation was who was in it. So it was like, Channing Tatum has to be the Belmont, or whatever. It would have been creatively bankrupt.”
“I wanted to be able to do these things right one day, and doing them wrong was a sure-fire way to not have credibility [later on],” Shankar said. “At the time it was a really crazy decision on my part because I didn’t know if I’d get more opportunities.”
You can read the whole interview here.
Honestly I don’t think a live action version would have been as good as the animated show. Super stoked for season 2 after that last fight to end season 1
The idea that one person makes or breaks a movie or show is a poor system of making a movie it’s good that they went with making a faithful adaptation instead
That’s fine. It works as an anime.
Because of the super obvious answer? It’s too expensive to do correctly in live action for the audience it generates.
Top tier animation or crappy live action. I’d say the right call was made.
Use the anime to build up fans’ faith in him & build up a Hollywood studio’s faith that he can make a good story. If this thing is successful as hell & does very well, he might win some funding to make a damn good live action film. If that is the plan, I hope he hasn’t already hit his peak in creating something great with the anime & a live action movie falls flat on it’s face because the best he could actually do was a cartoon. :/
Besides, we’ve gotten plenty of Dracula live action movies over the last 30 years (some better than others), so it’s time Dracula gets to shine a bit more in the animated department. After all, Hellsing needs some company! lol
I personally would give the first season a 5.5/10
Good animation, completely laughably bad story, meh voice acting and music, didn’t feel much like castlevania.