Dracula, Lakeside, the public domain and me

Many a moon ago, I wrote a proposal for a new take on Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula. Or I started one.

This isn’t an unfinished project in the never got around to completing sense.

At least not at this stage.

No, I rethought much of the details and turned it all into a feature screenplay called “The Hunt”, which I completed.

Somewhere in this process, the version of Dracula I’d originally conceived for the comic version was turned into a more generic character.

Also there was an older Cuban professor I wrote for Tomás Milian and sadly now definitely never will be.

At some point, I managed to try shooting a rewritten version of a small part of the beginning of the story under the title “Lakeside”, but it was never finished for a whole series of reasons that aren’t relevant to this.

Except that my shame and self-reproach have largely kept this work as far in the back of my mind as I can push it.

But recently I was feeling like exploring my horror self creatively, thought of something I might consider doing, and put it behind the thing I’m working on in line for things to work on.

Then I saw this tweet.

Now, this was not news to me.

Indeed, I’m aware that because the copyright was never filed correctly, it has actually always been in the public domain in the U.S.

But in the moment with my mind softened from self-protection against the project, I found myself trying to remember why I wrote Dracula out of the screenplay. I even left a scene in the short version that makes very little sense without Dracula, but no one ever suggested should be cut.

Hardly any of this is relevant to anything right now, but it’s something I’ll be thinking about if I ever do go back to it.

If you're looking for it, you'll recognize it by the fact that, if I have anything to say about it, it won't be called "The Hunt" or "Lakeside".