The Hollywood Reporter posts that Jill Culton has signed on to direct Sony Pictures' new animated feature Hotel Transylvania, where Romeo and Juliet will meet Van Helsing in a Gothic combo.

Hotel is the tale of Simon Van Helsing, the youngest in a long line of monster hunters, who falls in love with Dracula's daughter. Discovering they come from rival families, the couple works to bring peace between monsters and humans. (It shares the title with a bodice ripper, but has nothing in common with it.)

The project has been in development for some time with numerous story revisions. Culton is replacing the previous directors, Anthony Stacchi and David Feiss. Anyone who ever worked on Open Season seems to have been attached to it at some point.

To be honest, unless it is Disney or Pixar, I rarely perk up for animation from other studios. They always lack a certain something. But Open Season was rather cute (and I continue to think so even after a young friend of mine recited it back to me so many times), so hopefully this will be too.

They should totally get Hugh Jackman or Anthony Hopkins to voice one of the elder Van Helsings. Preferably both.
You can have that idea for free, Sony.

Sony is wasting no time when it comes to their own animated features, having just green-lit a third film one month before the release of its first. In what was once a field dominated by Pixar and Dreamworks, almost every other studio has since set up shop with their own animation division. Thus, the marketplace is now crowded and those booming box office numbers are no longer a sure thing. (See: The Ant Bully)

Variety reports Hotel Transylvania will mark the third pic for Sony Pictures Animation, whose Open Season debuts next month, followed by Surf's Up in 2007. Directed by Anthony Stacchi and David Feiss, story will re-visit our old friends Frankenstein, The Mummy, Dracula and Werewolf who are holed up in a hotel not far from Transylvania after "21st century technology has seemingly made them irrelevant."

Currently, Sony plans to release the film at some point in 2009, leaving an empty spot available for 2008. According to SPA's (Sony Pictures Animation) Penney Finkelman Cox, there's another project in advanced development that may be ready to bow that year. Personally, I love the Hotel Transylvania idea -- let's hope Open Season and Surf's Up don't tank beforehand.