Blood Count: Into The Spider-Verse's Peter Ramsay Will Direct A Live-Action Vampire Noir
Academy Award-winning "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" director Peter Ramsey is making the jump to live-action, and the project he's leading with is a bit of a surprising departure. He's not doing a superhero movie or another family friendly studio picture. Instead, he wrote a vampire noir called "Blood Count."
Yes, you read that right: a vampire noir. And a legit one, too. Set in the 1950s and said to be loosely inspired by Ramsey's own father's life as a jazz musician. That sounds good as hell already and knowing there's a personal connection to the material you get why Ramsey is all about using this particular story to launch his first feature film.
Paramount nabbed the rights and is currently developing it with Ramsey, alongside LeBron James and Maverick Carter's production company SpringHill.
Details on the story are still very limited, but one thing that did jump out in the bare bones description we got was that there'll be an eye on social commentary. The exact words were "social thriller." I don't know about you, but the first thing that jumped to mind when I heard "social thriller" was a certain Jordan Peele movie...
Yeah, I'm already feeling some "Get Out" vibes from this thing. Picture that with a blisteringly cool 1950s backdrop and throw some vampires into the mix and suddenly "Blood Count" becomes one of the more interesting films in the works at the moment.
Dracula Noir
I think most folks know at least a broad definition of film noir at this point. Heck, Ramsey helped educate a whole new generation about the tropes of noir in "Into the Spider-Verse" by incorporating Spider-Man Noir into the multiverse crossover. Noirs are usually defined by seedy crime stories, strong and treacherous women (called femme fatales) and lush black and white cinematography.
Now, that last part isn't a requirement. There have been many incredible noirs in color. In fact, Guillermo del Toro made a great one recently with "Nightmare Alley." But despite a lot of bendable rules, noirs are like pornography: you know it when you see it. They are typically crime-based morality tales where nobody is wholly innocent and happy endings are hard to come by.
Creating a horror noir against the backdrop of the 1950s jazz scene is a hell of a concept and one I can't wait to see play out. Gonna be very interesting to see the cast form for this one and I, for one, can't wait to see how Ramsey's directorial style translates to live action.