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Dracula’s been taking a bite out of the boxoffice going back to F.W. Murnau’s 1922 horror fantasy NOSFERATU.

NOSFERATU was loosely based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel DRACULA. Murnau changed his characters’ names, hoping (unsuccessfully) to avoid legal problems with Stoker’s estate.

Seventy years later, Francis Ford Coppola tackled Stoker’s novel, calling his film BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA. There were, however, some major differences between the film and book, including Vlad Dracula’s backstory.

Stoker didn’t give any motivations for Dracula becoming a blood drinking serial killer. Coppola, however, humanized Dracula through a tragic backstory where his wife commits suicide after his enemies lie that he’s been killed while fighting the Ottoman Empire in 1462. When a Romanian Orthodox Church priest says her suicide will “damn her soul to Hell,” Dracula plunges his sword into a stone cross. Upon drinking the blood that unexpectedly pours from that cross, Dracula becomes a vampire.

Coppola’s movie, which opened Nov. 13, 1992 via Columbia Pictures, began its journey to the screen when Winona Ryder read a TV movie script by James V. Hart that Michael Apted (THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH) was going to direct.

Ryder showed the script to Coppola, whom she hadn’t talked to since quitting his 1990 production of THE GODFATHER PART III, claiming exhaustion. Now, about six months later, she hoped to repair their relationship by meeting with Coppola about a film he was then considering based on Jack Kerouac’s 1957 Beat Generation novel “On the Road.”

Because of their issues with GODFATHER III, she didn’t think he’d be interested, but when Ryder mentioned the DRACULA script, it immediately got Coppola’s attention. As she left, she’s recalled saying: “‘If you have a chance, read this script.’ He glanced down at it politely, but when he saw the word Dracula, his eyes lit up. It was one of his favorite stories from camp.” Coppola saw it not for TV, but as a theatrical feature. He made Apted an executive producer and cast Ryder to star as a woman with an uncanny resemblance to Vlad’s late wife.

As Dracula, Coppola cast Gary Oldman — after considering a long list of other possibilities, including Nicolas Cage, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Keaton, Keanu Reeves (whom he cast in another role) & Christian Slater.

While preparing to play Dracula, Oldman avoided other cast members to increase his character’s alienation. He’s also said to have slept, like Drac, in a coffin to stay in character.

In the end, it all paid off. Coppola made DRACULA for $40M and it did $215.9M worldwide. That was more than enough to save Coppola’s studio, American Zoetrope, from bankruptcy after three years of financial stress that had left it with $27M of debts.