The script for the animated Castlevania film has entered its final month of editing.
Three months after submitting the script to the producers, comic book legend Warren Ellis has updated the official Castlevania: Dracula’s Curse film website with news that the edits from his backers have arrived and changes to the script will be minimal. Ellis predicts that it will take another five weeks before the script is officially finalized and the team can proceed onto development.
Ellis’ update reads:
Well, the notes on the screenplay came in this week. And I’m happy to say that they’re minimal, and easily dealt with. (And no-one’s said a thing about the swearing, the violence or the now-infamous Goat-Fucking Scene.)
In real terms, this means that we’ll have a locked script in five weeks or so. And that’s the point at which we commence the visual development in earnest. We all said from the beginning that everything has to emanate from the script, and our original conception of a videogame-derived film that was 1) a film for adults and 2) a good film first and a videogame-movie second.
He wrote an additional post explaining how the editing process works when dealing with producers.
The “notes” phase is an entire production step in itself. I look at everything the various players at this point have to say, and address each of them in one of two ways. Either I agree with the change, and add it to the script. Or I disagree with the change and want to stab the person who suggested it with broken bottles until they die. Since I’m in England and they’re in America, that gets difficult, and the bad exchange rate makes it harder, these days, to hire people in America who could do it for me. So I have to argue the point and explain in a coherent fashion why their note is bad for the script. And then they will tell me that I’m drunk and they don’t recognise the language I wrote my argument in and could I please stop sending the weird little drawings of them being raped by hoboes?
