Neil Marshall set to direct "The Last Voyage of Demeter".

This one probably falls into the category of Don't Get Your Hopes Up Yet, but I can't bring myself to care. The mere concept of a seafaring vampire movie directed by Neil Marshall causes me to froth at the mouth.

The Last Voyage Of Demeter concerns Dracula's journey from Transylvania to England, during which Dracula killed all but one of the ship's crew. Unlike every other aspect of the Dracula story, the voyage to England hasn't really been explored much, but under Neil Marshall's direction I'm hoping for it to grow into an awesomely schlocky, 19th-century version of Alien. It's really an ideal subject choice for this type of fanfic-esque movie because in most Dracula adaptations, the the sea voyage remains almost entirely offscreen in order to set up a more dramatic scene when the ghost-ship drifts into the English harbour with nothing but a coffin and a madman onboard. This way you can pick your favourite Dracula adaptation, and watch it with  The Last Voyage Of Demeter sandwiched into the middle! The Demeter story shouldn't step on the toes of other adaptations, but it's still not likely to include a whole bunch of irrelevent additions like one sees in loose adaptations such as Guy Ritchie's Holmes franchise or the recent Three Musketeers movie.

From The Descent, by Neil Marshall. (source)

For those unfamiliar with Neil Marshall, he's an English filmmaker who specialises in gleefully violent, suspenseful horror movies like Dog Soldiers, The Descent, and my all-time favourite, Doomsday. (Doomsday is a film of such brain-vomiting awesomeness that I can barely articulate its multitude of virtues. If you like the idea of a Scottish apocalypse movie featuring medieval knights, a badass female protagonist with a bionic eye, cannibal goth/punk cults, a deadly plague, Dr Bashir from Star Trek: DS9 playing a Tony Blair-esque Prime Minister, and a chase between motorcycles and a steam train, then... click here to read more?) Most recently Neil Marshall directed the Blackwater episode of Game Of Thrones, a self-contained seige warfare episode that received rave reviews and is (in my opinion) better than many of the extended battle sequences in Lord of the Rings. 

Right now the casting of Demeter is rather up-in-the-air. Although Noomi Rapace (!!) and Ben Kingsley's names have been semi-attached for a couple of years, neither have been confirmed and it seems like Ben Kingsley may have dropped out. Viggo Mortensen has just been offered the lead role (which isn't Dracula; I wouldn't be surprised if Dracula turns out to be a straight-up monster role rather than a "character"), but there's always a possibility these things can change right up until filming starts. I have no idea how excited other people are going to be about this movie, but OH BOY, AM I. Even discounting the likelihood of a Viggo Mortensen/Noomi Rapace combo, we have these elements to consider:

• ALIEN. This concept is straight-up Alien. Except instead of being in space, all the action will take place in an ocean-going Victorian ship that can creak ominously all the time and be crewed by a cast of superstitious, disloyal, angry and terrified sailors. I read a few sites today that wondered if it would be possible to retain suspense when the audience alread knows that all (or almost all) of the main characters are marked for death from the get-go, but... isn't that like most horror movies anyway? These things are all in the execution (pun unintended), not to mention the fact that with a cast that necessitates the presence several original, non-Dracula-canon characters, there's a definite possibility for a couple of survivors to be left come the end-credits.
• VAMPIRES. This post is mostly just speculation at the moment, but I feel like Neil Marshall would probably go for the absolute opposite type of vampire from the True Bloods and Twilights we're seeing a lot of right now. Neil Marshall likes to make movies about monsters and grotesques, and old-school Dracula is a monster and a grotesque rather than the dapper Dracula we see in most cinema adaptations. Temporarily unbound by the constraints of having to act like an aristocrat and a gentleman, the voyage to England is the perfect setting for Dracula to turn into the kind of feral villain we see in Dog Soldiers and Doomsday.
• PERIL AT SEA. A sailing ship is the perfect setting for a monster movie because it's 100% isolated and any attempts to get to safety depend on the weather and on the ability of the crew to work together as a unit. Also, Victorian sailing ships already provide unnumbered opportunities for gruesome death without the addition of a murderous vampire onboard, so I have no doubt that Neil Marshall will be able to exploit every available circumstance for gore and terror.

Viggo the Vampire Slayer. Potentially.

(Postscript: Dracula should obviously be played by Tilda Swinton.)

Links
The Last Voyage Of Demeter at IMDB.
Bloody Disgusting: Viggo Mortensen Offered Lead In Dracula Tale, ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’