Hilary Swank & John Carpenter To Visit ‘Fangland’

It’s been nine long years since John Carpenter’s last feature film “Ghosts Of Mars,” but the director seems to be back behind the camera in a big way. He has the horror film “The Ward,” starring Amber Heard in the can and according to ComingSoon he’s now lining up an adaptation of “Fangland” with none other than two-time Academy award winner Hilary Swank.

Based on a novel by John Marks, the story centers on Evangeline Harker, a television reporter for a “60 Minutes” type show who is abducted and “infected” by a Romanian crime lord in a modern day take on the Dracula story. Here is the full book synopsis from Booklist:

Professional and personal aspirations collide when Evangeline, an ambitious associate producer of The Hour (“the most successful news show in American television history”) accepts Robert’s wedding proposal just before jetting off on an assignment she would rather dodge. Her uber-producer dismisses her protestations, so it’s off to Transylvania to evaluate a possible story on Romanian reputed crime lord Ion Torgu. Marks’ sense of place (a horse and wagon in front of a Coke sign symbolizes the transition from communism) and tone-setting emphasis on blood and bloodlines kick in early as Evangeline mulls over blending her Italian Irish heritage and Robert’s mix of Creek Indian and the U.S. marshals who fought them, a union represented for her by the engagement ring she insists on wearing to meet the small, pale Torgu, who proves a kind of terrorist, and who infects her “like a virus” when she is abducted. She resurfaces months later, recuperating in Transylvania and recalling nothing. A scary twenty-first-century take on the stuff of Dracula, worthy of its rightful place among others.

For Swank, it will be a return to the horror genre after 2007’s “The Reaping” and fans may know she also had a role way back when, in the “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” film. As for Carpenter, it will be another visit to the vampire genre, his first being 1998’s “Vampires.”