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phantomstranger
08-20-2006, 02:31 PM
12:00 AM, 18-AUGUST-06
Family Horror Marks Transylvania
Anthony Stacchi and David Feiss, directors of the upcoming animated monster movie Hotel Transylvania, told SCI FI Wire that they wanted to meld classic horror characters with domestic drama, as The Sopranos mixes the Mafia with family issues. (Stacchi worked on the upcoming animated film Open Season.)

"We're kind of going back to the cross-cultural memory of these monsters, not specifically to any particular old movie or anything," Stacchi (Curious George) said in an interview at Sony Pictures Animation studios in Culver City, Calif. "I think Frankenstein, Dracula and the rest of them, they sort of live in people's minds to a certain degree, so we're sort of jumping off from that starting point and then showing the other side of them. Like, we always laugh at The Sopranos, because you think of Mafia people as being one way, and you don't think of them as having all of these domestic family issues."

Hotel Transylvania is set in a decaying castle where the classic movie monsters, including the Mummy and the Wolf Man, have retreated from the world, but where they can't escape domestic issues: Frankenstein's marriage to the Bride is over, and Count Dracula is having trouble controlling his 117-year-old daughter.

"That was the charm of The Sopranos, and we thought it would be funny if the charm of these monsters was, like, they have their own family issues," co-director Feiss said. "Like, Dracula has a daughter that he's concerned about. She's, like, a rebellious teenager, much like Meadow Soprano."

Stacchi added: "And Frankenstein has marriage problems, because she's ... filed for divorce from him. ... And then there was always something that appealed to us. As a child, you remember seeing those movies on your local creature-double-feature thing, and ... I as a kid always remember I always felt bad for the monsters. I didn't get the sort of Victorian horror of Frankenstein and Dracula. I was like, 'Why don't they leave them alone? Why are they beating them up? Why do they shoot King Kong? Leave them alone.' And I always wanted to do a movie where you'd get to see that other side of them and see why they were these sort of sad, tortured souls. I mean, Frankenstein didn't ask to be made. Werewolf didn't ask to be made a werewolf. Or the rest of them." Hotel Transylvania, part of Sony Pictures Animation's upcoming initial slate of family films, is aiming for release in late 2008. —Patrick Lee, News Editor