First and foremost amongst the new updates is the heavy involvement of Castlevania series producer Koji Igarashi--frequently known as IGA--in the project. "We've worked with Koji Igarashi to get the film solidly inside the Castlevania timeline, and he's approved everything I came up with, including some new embroidering to the timeline," wrote Ellis in the official production blog. "To make it work as a film, I had to introduce new backstory, and I went through five drafts of the premise and three of the full outline to get the material where IGA wanted it. He remains absolutely passionate about Castlevania. After eight rewrites of pre-production material, I remain absolutely passionate about beating the crap out of IGA in a dark alleyway one day."

Ellis then revealed the overall story has been split into three pieces and that while series fans may lament the exclusion of pirate Grant DaNasty from the initial release, he plans to include the character--with alternative Grant DiNesti spelling--in a later installment. "We want to do three films," he said. "I only have 80 minutes [for the first movie]. And in that 80 minutes I need to set up the backdrop, the history, the themes and five major characters to tell the story I want to tell. Because this isn't going to be the usual kind of videogame adaptation, the kind that just transposes the least challenging parts of gameplay to the screen. This is going to be an actual goddamn film with an actual goddamn story. To try and shoehorn Grant in there, when I'm already trying to create the space for Trevor, Sypha and Alucard to breathe and fill the screen (not even mentioning Dracula, Lisa or the Bishop for the moment)...no. I'd end up doing a bad job on all of them, and giving up whole chunks of the plot. At which point you might as well just call Uwe Boll, you know?"

Lastly, Ellis also hinted at the type of content fans can expect. "What brought me onboard, beyond the word CASTLEVANIA, was producer Kevin Kolde telling me upfront that he did not want this to be a kids' movie. The freedom of [direct-to-DVD] meant that we could tell the story without filters, in whatever way we deemed best. I said something like 'thank fuck for that.'"