EXCLUSIVE: Dan Knauf, creator of the cult HBO series Carnivale, has joined NBC’s upcoming 10-episode series Dracula as showrunner/head writer, working with series creator Cole Haddon. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is set to play the iconic vampire in Dracula, which is being produced for both NBC and UK’s Sky Living by Tony Krantz’s Flame Ventures; Colin Callender’s Playground Entertainment; Universal TV; and NBCU International Prods’ Carnival Films & Television, the company behind phenom Downton Abbey. Based on an idea by Krantz, Dracula is set in the 1890s and is described as “Dangerous Liaisons meets The Tudors.”

In it, Dracula (Meyers) arrives in London, posing as an American entrepreneur who maintains that he wants to bring modern science to Victorian society. In reality, he hopes to wreak revenge on the people who ruined his life centuries earlier but falls hopelessly in love with a woman who seems to be a reincarnation of his dead wife. Krantz and Callender are executive producing the series with Knauf, Gareth Neame and Anne Mensah. Haddon and Flame’s Reece Pearson co-executive produce.

