Mark Gatiss gives update on when Dracula will start filming

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“Where are we up to? Uh, page number….” the writer and actor joked.

“No, we’re filming the beginning of next year. It's going very well, thank you.”

In the meantime, Gatiss has had another supernatural story to work on – BBC4’s original ghost story The Dead Room, which Gatiss wrote and directed over the summer for broadcast this Christmas Eve – and as it turns out, thanks to cast member Susan Penhaligon it may have offered a bit of inspiration for Dracula as well.

“Susan is also in what for me and Steven Moffat is the definitive Dracula, of 1977,” Gatiss told RadioTimes.com, referring to a BBC adaptation that starred Louis Jordan as the Count and which has been acclaimed as one of the best screen versions of Bram Stoker’s novel.

“The definitive Lucy Westenra, she is.”

“Oh, thank you for that,” Susan replied. “That was before CGI, you know, where they did the effects in the studio.”

So from the sounds of it, anyone looking for any clues about what will be in the new BBC Dracula could do a lot worse than taking a look back at the old one. If nothing else, it’s clearly a big inspiration.

The Dead Room airs on BBC4 on Christmas Eve (Monday 24th December) at 10.00pm