Warren Ellis, the writer behind several original comics, novels, and animated series, is also the creator of the Castlevania animation. The series was an instant hit and could even pull out of the video game curse!
In an interview with Bleeding Cool, Ellis confessed that he has never played any of the games he has worked with. In fact, most of his knowledge of Castlevania comes from Wikipedia and other fan-pages. However, the splendid voice cast of Castlevania made Ellis do things he never thought he would.
As the writer fell for the series and its voice actors, he realized it would be idiotic to not perfect the script even more.
Warren Ellis Did What Every Writer Hates for Castlevania Voice Actors
‘Relieved’ would be an understatement for what Warren Ellis felt when he got to know the Castlevania voice actors. He was enamored by their talents as each of them showed him something new. This led the writer to fold into the writing even more.
In the interview, Ellis admitted that he could still remember every actor and how he changed his writing to suit the performances of the characters.
It’s a terrible thing to fall in love with your actors but when they are this good, and bringing so much, you’d be an idiot not to take it with you and fold it into writing.
Every writer’s worst nightmare is having to rewrite their script several times just to accommodate small things. Yet, Ellis loved the franchise and its crew so much that he gladly changed his script not once or twice but multiple times over.
You just start writing for your actors and thinking of fun things for them to do. You lose what it was that attracted them to the project.
According to Ellis, each and every actor decided to join the project because they liked the scripts, and personalizing them according to the quirks they brought was just a way to entertain them even more.
How the Castlevania Cast Came to be
Warren Ellis, Kelvin Kolde (executive producer), and Meredith Layne (casting director) all discussed at length who they wanted for the Castlevania characters and who was available to join. He admitted that Layne is the best at recruiting people that the others could not even think of.
Ellis was so excited about Castlevania and enjoyed the prospect of writing about it that he became involved in most aspects of the show.
I’m involved in almost all aspects of the show which is weird for me going from someone who sits in a box, types, and emails scripts to being involved with a lot of different people. I speak with our composer as well, Trevor Morris, and suggest probably extremely annoying things I’d like to try.
It looks like the animation made Ellis break a lot of his rules as he enjoyed being involved with the series. The author even humorously commented that at first, he had no idea what he was doing, but later, he had almost no idea about what he was doing. Thus, he considered it major progress.
It’s what I love most about the act of writing, which is that it is something new every day. I’ve actually really loved this entire experience.
By the end of the interview, it was pretty evident that Ellis considered Castlevania a dear project and had put his heart into its development. Given the series’ success story, you can say that it all paid off.
You can watch the Castlevania animation on Netflix.
