Monsters are Just Like Regular People in ‘Hotel Transylvania’

Monsters are Just Like Regular People in ‘Hotel Transylvania’

“Hotel Transylvania is a story about a father and a daughter – it’s just that the father happens to be Dracula,” says Genndy Tartakovsky, director of Sony Pictures Animation’s new, 3D animated comedy, “Hotel Transylvania.”

“Like all fathers, he’s an overprotective, psychotic, and endearing guy who’d do anything for his daughter, but unlike other fathers, he’s the Prince of Darkness.”

In the film it turns out that the world’s most famous monsters – including Dracula, Frankenstein, the Werewolf, the Invisible Man, and the Mummy – are just like regular people, with families and problems and a need to get away from it all… but unlike humans, they have to live in hiding from a world that thinks they’re, well, monsters. What better place to hide than Hotel Transylvania, which Dracula himself operates as a sanctuary from the rest of the world and has been human-free since 1898?

But Dracula has issues of his own… his daughter, Mavis, is a teenager – in fact, she’s about to turn 118 – and as she becomes a woman, the vampire’s greatest fear is losing his relationship with her. Well, his two greatest fears are losing his relationship with his daughter and garlic, but that’s another story.

“One of the toughest things you have to do as a parent is to let your children go out into the world,” says producer Michelle Murdocca, who has shepherded the film since its inception. “You can’t protect them; you just have to trust that they’re going to be able to take care of themselves. It turns out that even Dracula thinks the world can be a scary place sometimes.”

“Hotel Transylvania makes these monsters funny – funnier than they’ve ever been – but the reason these monsters have lasted through the years is that they all have great personal stories,” says Tartakovsky. “There’s a humanity to them that makes them accessible. And that’s what we’ve found for our Dracula – there’s a great, accessible, bittersweet story, where you see how human the vampire is.”

“When I first joined Sony Pictures Animation – right at the very beginning of the studio – and looked at the development slate, I was immediately struck by `Hotel Transylvania,’” says Murdocca, who also produced Sony Pictures Animation’s first feature film, “Open Season.” “I loved the fun that we could have with all of these traditional characters as we do a whole new take on them. When Adam Sandler joined the project, it really opened up a lot of possibilities about who Dracula could be – suddenly, we saw the potential of it becoming a bigger and broader comedy than we had ever imagined.”


Opening across the Philippines in September, “Hotel Transylvania” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.