Trivia for
Van Helsing (2004) More at IMDbPro »

• Before David Wenham was cast as Carl, Paul Hogan was reportedly considered for the role.
  
  
• Originally planned in 1994 as a direct sequel to Dracula (1992) with Anthony Hopkins to reprise the title role. After it was pushed back, many story elements were changed.
  
  
• Hugh Jackman had hair extensions added for filming.
  
  
• During filming, Hugh Jackman accidentally broke an extra's hand.
  
  
• The second-to-last scene of X2 (2003) (Cyclops, Wolverine, and Professor X discussing Jean Grey) was filmed while Hugh Jackman had a day off from this movie.
  
  
• In this movie, Kate Beckinsale plays a vampire hunter. In Underworld (2003) and Underworld: Evolution (2006) she plays a vampire.
  
  
• Shuler Hensley, playing Frankenstein's Monster, also stood in as a body double for the CG Mr. Hyde for fight scenes between him and Van Helsing. Shuler wore a cardboard cutout with Mr. Hyde's face on top of his head so Hugh Jackman could have a point of reference when looking at his face.
  
  
• While preparing for the ballroom scene, Stephen Sommers had Richard Roxburgh, Kate Beckinsale and Elena Anaya practice dancing for hours every day so their performance would be flawless.
  
  
• The effect of the vampire brides' flying forms was pulled off by having the face and hair of the actresses made up as it would appear in the film and having them wear motion capture suits and film them against green screen. SPOILER: The appearance of the three brides is based on the brides in Dracula (1992). Ironically, Silvia Colloca played the queen bride as Monica Bellucci did and the two have been compared often. Also, the fair haired vampire (Marishka) dies first in both movies.
  
  
• While fighting with Van Helsing at Notre Dame cathedral, Mr. Hyde hits the bell and yells "Oh! the bells! the bells!", a reference to another classical movie monster, Quasimodo, in Lon Chaney's adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel "Our Lady of Paris".
  
  
• So that the production company can hold certain rights to the character, the original character from the Dracula series Abraham Van Helsing was changed to the new 'kid brother' Gabriel Van Helsing instead.
  
  
• Director Stephen Sommers claimed in an interview he changed the main character's name from Abraham Van Helsing to Gabriel Van Helsing, as he did not think he could have a lead character named Abraham. The Irishman who wrote Dracula, Bram Stoker, named the character after himself - Bram being a shortening of Abraham.
  
  
• The role of Igor was written specifically for Stephen Sommers's friend and frequent collaborator Kevin J. O'Connor.
  
  
• The opening sequence recalls the original sequence from Frankenstein (1931) in which The Monster is brought to life, right up until Dracula shows up to talk with Viktor.
  
  
• Cans delivering the film to theaters were labeled "The Vatican Detective".
  
  
• Dr. Frankenstein's lab was equipped with antique medical equipment purchased on eBay.
  
  
• While the film is an homage to the 1930s and '40s Universal Monster horror films, the inclusion of Mr. Hyde is an oddity, as he was never one of the Universal Monster roster. Instead, the films based on Hyde during that time were made for Universal's rival MGM. However, in 1953, Universal did feature the monster in the comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953).
  
  
• Dracula's diminutive henchmen, the Dwerger, are actually dwarfs from Germanic folklore.
  
  
• Among the most direct references to the original Universal horror films is the use of the Werewolf Poem which was created for the original The Wolf Man (1941) and quoted in every subsequent Universal film featuring that creature. The character of Igor is also clearly based upon Ygor from Son of Frankenstein (1939) and The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), though he also exhibits personality traits of Fritz from the original Frankenstein (1931) and Renfield from the original Drácula (1931). A scene where Dracula grabs a cross which bursts into flames is almost identical to a scene in Universal's remake of Dracula (1979).
  
  
• The place where Van Helsing and Anna fight Dracula's three wives is the same place where they filmed Frankenstein (1931)_, _Dracula (1931/I)_ and The Wolf Man (1941). The place is call the Court of Miracles and this place is also found at the studio tour at Universal Studios Hollywood.
  
  
• David Wenham's character Carl is named after Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Studios during the time that Frankenstein (1931) _Dracula (1931/I)_ and The Wolf Man (1941) were made.
  
  
• This is the first movie, other than the Lord of the Rings films, to use the MASSIVE software program developed for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
  
  
• The Transylvanian town built for this movie is to be the basis for a TV series. According to the producers, it was too good to just tear down.
  
  
• The movie has no opening credits. Something of an opening sequence preceeds the full credits at the end of the film.
  
  
• Stephen Sommers wanted Kate Beckinsale for the role of Anna, but feared it was too similar in tone to the vampire/werewolf film Underworld (2003) which she was shooting at the time, and he didn't ask her. Eventually her agent got Sommers to send the script and Beckinsale immediately signed on.
  
  
• The DVD sales was $65 million in the first week in North American, more than half the revenue from theater runs.
  
  
• There are three separate scenes where a werewolf falls off something and into a body of water, making a small but noticeable splash. This is an in-joke on Wile E. Coyote.
  
  
• The last scene shot for actor Will Kemp was actually his death scene. It was filmed in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California. In the scene he is to lay against a rock. What the crew did not know was that there were a lot of spiders in the area and when Kemp's scene was finally completed, he went home with many spider bites on his back and arms.
  
  
• Though there is no actual title card, the title can be seen on a wanted poster as soon as the film turns to color.
  
  
• Kate Beckinsale was the last to be cast.
  
  
• The dialogue in the scene where Anna drives a stake through Aleera and tells her "if you're going to kill someone kill them don't stand there taking about it" is almost identical to that of the scene in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. (1966), where after shooting the bounty hunter, Tuco tells him "if you're going to shoot someone, shoot them don't talk about it".
  
  
• A spin-off TV series was pitched to NBC. To have been called "Transylvania", it was to have featured a wild-west sheriff taken to Europe to battle monsters, with occasional guest appearances by Hugh Jackman as Gabriel Van Helsing. The series idea was stillborn, partly because makeup, effects, and location shooting in Romania would have been too expensive, and partly because the film's opening weekend box office was far below expectations (which also doomed a proposed sequel to the film).
  
  
• The Dutch audience awarded it with the 'TV Krant Filmposter Award' of 2004.
  
  
• The film was storyboarded and previsualized with the intent of shooting the film in the anamorphic 2.35:1 format, like Stephen Sommers' previous films. The aspect ratio was changed to 1.85:1 in order to better accommodate Dracula's vertically-oriented castle without having to extend the sets.
  
  

• SPOILER: One of the last shots in which Van Helsing transforms back into a human from a werewolf was originally to be a nude scene (for Hugh Jackman), however Stephen Sommers felt that it would have been too distracting to the viewer and disrupt the emotion of Anna's death from the scene. The nude shot is still used in the film, however a CGI loin cloth was animated to cover Jackman's rear.
  
  

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