Trivia / The Last Voyage of the Demeter

• Box Office Bomb: Budget of $45m, global box office of $21.8m. It never got a theatrical release in the United Kingdom after Entertainment One shut down its operations there ahead of its sale to Lionsgate and a number of other markets never got it either. Also, it was released in August, in addition to the continuous weak competition of Strays (2023), which was also released by Universal the following week, making the box office revenue chance weaker.
• Completely Different Title: In Spanish, while the film was released in Spain under a straight translation of the title, in Latin America it was released as Drácula: Mar de sangre ("Dracula: Sea of Blood").
• Dueling Works:
  • This movie was released only four months after Renfield, which was also released by Universal. While the two movies are both takes on the Dracula tale, this movie is a straight horror set in the book's time period, whereas Renfield is a horror-comedy that brings the characters to the modern day.
  • There's also 2023's Wrath of Dracula, which is centered around the Dracula mythos character of Mina Harker.
• Inspiration for the Work: Bragi Schut wanted to write a film like Alien, and hit upon the concept when he saw the model of the Demeter from Bram Stoker's Dracula in person.
• Meaningful Release Date: The film released on August 11, which is three days after the date given for the crash of the Demeter in the original Dracula novel.
• Playing Against Type: David Dastmalchian usually plays quiet, timid, and psychologically fragile characters, in contrast to the brash and outspoken Wojchek.
• Saved from Development Hell: The first draft of the script was written in 2002, and went through numerous rewrites and directors in the ensuing twenty-one years.
• Screwed by the Network: The film's planned theatrical release in multiple countries such as the United Kingdom was postponed indefinitely due to Entertainment One shutting down their operations in the country due to being sold to Lionsgate.
• What Could Have Been: Two decades of development hell tends to lead to a lot of this.
  • Robert Schwentke, Patrick Tatopoulos, Marcus Nispel, Stefan Ruzowitsky, David Slade, and Neil Marshall were all attached to direct.
  • Noomi Rapace and Ben Kingsley were cast as Anna and the ship's captain in 2010. Rapace left to work on Prometheus.
  • Viggo Mortensen was in talks to play Clemens in 2012.
  • In earlier drafts of the script, the main character was a Romanian peasant named Alexei "Alec" Radu, who was pursuing Dracula to avenge the murder of his son. Depending on the draft, the son was either the baby Dracula fed to his brides in the original novel, or was kidnapped and fed upon while the vampire was on the road to Varna.
  • Thomas Newman was originally announced as a composer of this film, but due to his scheduling conflicts, he was replaced by Bear McCreary to finish the film score.
  • Roman Osin originally served as the film's cinematographer, but in the final version, Tom Stern was officially credited as cinematographer for unknown reasons.
  • Producer Bradley J. Fischer revealed that the ending almost included a cameo from Professor Abraham Van Helsing.
  • Dracula was originally going to be shown also in his wolf form before it was ultimately scrapped.