This morning we received a pretty damn confusing press release that sounds exciting. Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew and blood descendant, Dacre Stoker, and award-winning Dracula documentarian and historian Ian Holt have sold North American-English publishing rights of the Stoker-family-authorized sequel to Bram’s classic novel DRACULA: THE-UNDEAD for well over mid – seven figures. According to the release, new novels are on the way, along with a feature film. Read on and see if you can decipher what’s going on with the film.
LONDON, 1912: Someone is stalking the brave band of heroes who had defeated the vampire Dracula a quarter-century ago.
Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew and blood descendant, Dacre Stoker, and award-winning Dracula documentarian and historian Ian Holt have sold North American-English publishing rights of the Stoker-family-authorized sequel to Bram’s classic novel for well over mid – seven figures U.S. to an alliance of Dutton U.S. (Brian Tart), Harper U.K. (Jane Johnson), and Penguin-Canada (Laura Shin) brokered by Danny Baror of Baror International and Ken Atchity, of Atchity Entertainment International, the literary manager representing Stoker and Holt. The novel will appear in October 2009.
Laura Shin, senior editor of Penguin-Canada, who signed up for two additional sequels, said, “I was thrilled by this page-turning story and loved spending time with those great characters-Stoker and Holt did a fantastic job melding the old with the new, and I found the work to be a virtually seamless continuation of the original. The story has all the hallmarks of a historical novel, but with a modern sensibility that gives it wide-spread appeal.” Dutton and Harper signed a single novel deal. Although other precedent-setting foreign deals are already closed from preempts, Baror is planning to sign the bulk of world territories at the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair.
Using Stoker family connections, the writers were able to access Bram Stoker’s hand-written notes for his novel – which, before an editor changed the title, was to