Nicolas Cage has built a career out of biting into his characters with almost reckless abandon, even as he moved away from studio filmmaking and into indie filmmaking.

Cage is set to play Count Dracula in an upcoming Universal monster film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road, X-Men: Dark Phoenix) plays the titular acolyte and henchman in Renfield, based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. Renfield was an asylum inmate who was obsessed with the concept of consuming blood to achieve immortality. In exchange for his dedication and adoration, he is taken under Dracula’s wing and fed animals as well as the prospect of a never-ending life.

Because storyline specifics are being kept under wraps, it’s unknown how Renfield handles the situation, although the project is touted as a hilarious modern-day adventure story.

The film will be directed by Chris McKay, who was responsible for such hits as The Tomorrow War and the surprisingly amazing LEGO Batman Movie. If you’re still on the fence, just watch those movies and your anxieties will go. While the sequel to The LEGO Batman Movie was sadly canceled, that doesn’t change the fact that the first film is near-perfect. It understood precisely what it wanted to be and delivered one of the finest family comedies in recent memory, so perhaps Renfield can follow suit.

Along with David Alpert, Bryan Furst, and Sean Furst, McKay and Robert Kirkman are producing. Samantha Nisenboim, McKay’s producing partner, is exec producing.

Cage is known for being a method actor who ate red meat to gain weight and connect as a carnivore in the 2013 crime drama “Joe” and had two of his teeth out without anaesthetic to inflict physical agony on himself before playing a Vietnam veteran in 1984’s “Birdy.” In the case of “Renfield,” it might indicate that Cage will be eating a lot of garlic in the future.

Cage rose to prominence as an actor with films like Moonstruck and Raising Arizona in the 1980s, before receiving an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas in 1995 and becoming one of the world’s most famous actors. He went on to star in a slew of box office smashes, including The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off, and National Treasure. In 2002, he was nominated for a second Academy Award for his performance in Adaptation.

Since his last major studio film, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, in 2011, he has starred in a slew of indies, many of which are indulgently weird and some of which are downright obscure.

In a recent interview with Variety, Cage stated that he prefers to work on low-budget film sets since typical studio movies impose financial restraints.

“When I was making Jerry Bruckheimer movies back-to-back, that was just a high pressure game. There were a lot of fun moments, but at the same time, there was also ‘We wrote this line. It has to be said this way,’” Cage said. “They’d put a camera on you and photograph you, and order you: ‘Now say the roller skate training wheels line.’ I’d say, ‘I’ll do that but I’d also like to try it this way.’ On independent movies, you have more freedom to experiment and be fluid. There’s less pressure and there’s more oxygen in the room.”

WME, Stride Management, and attorney Patrick Knapp represent the actor, who dabbled in bloodsucking in the 1989 cult horror comedy Vampire’s Kiss.