Van Helsing (film) Van Helsing (film) Van Helsing is a 2004 American horror film written and directed by Stephen Sommers. It stars Hugh Jackman as vigilante monster hunter Van Helsing, and Kate Beckinsale as Anna Valerious. The film is an homage and tribute to the Universal Horror Monster films from the 1930s and '40s (also produced by Universal Studios which were in turn based on novels by Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley), of which Sommers is a fan. The eponymous character was inspired by the Dutch vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing from Irish author Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula". Distributed by Universal Pictures, the
Bram Stoker well known. The first authorised film version of "Dracula" did not come about until almost a decade later when Universal Studios released Tod Browning's "Dracula" starring Bela Lugosi. Canadian writer Dacre Stoker, a great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker, decided to write "a sequel that bore the Stoker name" to "reestablish creative control over" the original novel, with encouragement from screenwriter Ian Holt, because of the Stokers' frustrating history with "Dracula's" copyright. In 2009, "Dracula: The Un-Dead" was released, written by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt. Both writers "based [their work] on Bram Stoker's own handwritten notes for characters and plot threads