Castlevania, Netflix’s animated series inspired by Konami’s video game, has received steady attention over the years. After four seasons, the saga of Alucard concluded in 2021.
Another sequel series, Castlevania: Nocturne, debuted in 2023 focusing on Richter Belmont, a descendant of Trevor and Sypha. It is one of the few series that have performed well despite being adapted from a game, and in an interview, Kevin Kolde, the executive producer behind the series, discussed the ups and downs of the franchise.
Kevin Kolde Talks About Castlevania Breaking the Video Game Curse
The video game curse is a common term that refers to the phenomena of series or movies adapted from video games that end up performing horribly. Many of these adaptations have poor writing as well as visuals and incorporate too many original elements. This makes people distance it from the original game, and the media ends up failing.
In recent years, the video game curse has been broken by several movies and series, like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Castlevania. Kevin Kolde was overjoyed to share that the response to the Castlevania series was better than he had expected.
The fan response has been great!…I remember when the first season came out on [Netflix] and just watching the response in real-time on Twitter and breathing a big sigh of relief.
The producer explained that it was fun to start with the project. They had a plan and knew what they were doing. They knew they had created a good series, but the end result was in the hands of the audience, and there was a bit of uncertainty involved. However, everyone was impressed by the positive reviews.
How Castlevania‘s Overwhelming Response Inspired the Team
After Kevin Kolde and the animation team examined the response from fans, it invigorated the team. In fact, the positive responses continued over the span of all four seasons. He also talked about how this meant a lot for Sam and Adam Deats, the two main directors of the series.
It inspires me and Sam and Adam to do more and to do better.
Kolde talked about the animation in season 4, which is way better than what they had started out with. It features the most spectacular animation in the entire franchise. According to him, everyone wanted to top themselves with season 4.
We ended in a great place with Season 3; we’ve got to top it for Season 4. It’s a labor of love, and the fans have been great, and we feed off of that; it’s a mutual thing that inspires us to do better.
It is always nice to see a motivated team, and perhaps this is the secret behind Castlevania‘s grand success. Kevin Kolde himself was a huge Castlevania video game fan and confessed that he was a regular player. Since he had grown up with Marvel comics and monster movies, Castlevania was the perfect amalgamation of everything he loved.
With such a dedicated team and everyone from the director and cast to the producer being a perfect fit, Castlevania was bound to break the ‘video game curse.’
You can watch Castlevania on Netflix.
