Hotel Transylvania (film)

Plot

In 1895, after his wife Martha was killed by an angry human mob, Count Dracula commissions and builds a massive monsters-only hotel in Transylvania, in which he raises his young daughter, Mavis. The hotel also serves as a safe haven and a getaway for the world's monsters from fear of human persecution. Famous monsters and friends of Dracula such as Frankenstein and his wife Eunice, Wayne and Wanda Werewolf and their massive immediate family, Griffin the Invisible Man, and Murray the Mummy often come to stay at the hotel.

On Mavis's 118th birthday, she resolves to see the human world. Dracula allows her to leave the castle, but he sets up an elaborate plan using his zombie bellhops disguised as humans to intimidate Mavis and frighten her home. The plan succeeds, but the zombies inadvertently lead a human, Jonathan "Johnny" Loughran, back to the hotel. Dracula frantically disguises him as a Frankenstein-esque monster and passes him off as Frank's cousin, "Johnnystein". Jonathan soon meets Mavis and the two "zing". Johnny quickly becomes popular among other monsters, worrying Dracula, as he is both envious of Johnny's popularity and fearful that the monsters will abandon the hotel if they find out the truth. Dracula coerces Johnny to leave, but he is brought back by Mavis, who is unaware of the truth. After being shown the beauty of a sunrise by Johnny, Mavis is inspired to give humans another chance.

Meanwhile, the hotel chef Quasimodo and his pet rat Esmeralda learn that Johnny is a human and kidnap him to cook him. Dracula intervenes and freezes Quasimodo to prevent him from exposing Johnny. He then leads Johnny to his quarters and shows him a photo of Martha, to which Johnny understands why Dracula is so protective of Mavis and distrustful of humans. Johnny agrees to leave for good, but Dracula, noticing that Mavis and Johnny's feelings for each other are genuine, persuades him to stay and celebrate Mavis's birthday.

During Mavis's birthday party, she shares a kiss with Johnny. An angry Dracula has an outburst, inadvertently revealing that Johnny is a human. The guests become shocked and outraged over the deceit, but Mavis is undeterred. Johnny rejects her out of respect for Dracula. A heartbroken Mavis flies onto the roof with her mother's gift, followed by Dracula. He learns that the present is a book about how he and Martha "zinged" and fell in love, and realizes that he no longer knows mankind's true tolerance of monsters. Dracula apologizes to the patrons and persuades Frank, Wayne, Griffin, and Murray to enter the human world and search for Johnny. They discover that he is about to catch a flight back to the United States.

The five head to the airport, but are held up in a town celebrating a Monster Festival. Frankenstein attempts to scare away the crowd, but instead receives wild applause and adoration. He convinces the humans to help, and Dracula is shielded from the sunlight by a group of vampire-dressed men. Dracula sees Johnny's plane taking off and transforms into a bat to chase it, burning in the sunlight. After getting Johnny's attention, he uses his mind-control powers on the pilot to apologize and announces that Mavis is capable of making her own decisions over the PA system. Johnny accepts his apology, and Dracula manipulates the pilot to return to the Transylvanian airport. Dracula returns Johnny to Mavis and proclaims that he approves of Johnny. Johnny confesses to Mavis that their "zing" was mutual, and they share a kiss.

Voice cast

Main article: List of Hotel Transylvania characters

Middle: Kevin James, Steve Buscemi and CeeLo Green voices Frankenstein, Wayne and Murray Bottom: David Spade, Fran Drescher, Molly Shannon and Jon Lovitz voices Griffin, Eunice, Wanda and Quasimodo Wilson

• Adam Sandler as Count "Drac" Dracula, a vampire and the owner of the hotel and Mavis's overprotective father.
• Andy Samberg as Jonathan "Johnny" Loughran, Mavis's love interest.
• Selena Gomez as Mavis Dracula, daughter of Count Dracula and late Martha, and Jonathan's love interest.
  • Sadie Sandler as young Mavis Dracula, as well as Winnie, Wayne and Wanda's werewolf daughter.
• Kevin James as Frankenstein, one of Count Dracula's best friends who acts as an uncle to Mavis and mostly hangs out with Murray.
• Steve Buscemi as Wayne, a werewolf who is one of Count Dracula's best friends and Wanda's husband.
• CeeLo Green as Murray, a short, fat mummy who is one of Count Dracula's best friends and mostly hangs out with Frankenstein. He is later voiced by Keegan-Michael Key in the next three films.
• David Spade as Griffin the Invisible Man, one of Count Dracula's best friends.
• Fran Drescher as Eunice, Frankenstein's wife and Wanda's best friend.
• Molly Shannon as Wanda, a werewolf, Wayne's heavily pregnant wife and Eunice's best friend.
• Jon Lovitz as Quasimodo Wilson, a hunchbacked gourmet chef and the former bell-ringer of Notre-Dame who desires to make a dish with human as the main ingredient.
• Chris Parnell as Mr. Fly, Hotel Transylvania's fitness coordinator who can also translate any speech.
• Brian George as a suit of armor who acts as the head of Hotel Transylvania's security guards.
• Jim Wise and Luenell as the shrunken heads that serve as a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door of Mavis's room.
• Brian Stack as a pilot who flies Jonathan's airplane back to America.
• Jackie Sandler as Martha, Dracula's wife and Mavis's mother who was killed by an angry mob when Mavis was an infant.
• Rob Riggle as Skeleton Husband
• Paul Brittain as Mr. Ghouligan, a zombie plumber.
• Brian McCann as Yeti The heads of the Hydra named Mr. Hydraberg are voiced by Jim Wise, Paul Brittain, Jonny Solomon, Craig Kellman, and Brian McCann.

Production

Development

Hotel Transylvania was originally created and developed by comedy writer Todd Durham, which he based on his book of the same name; after creating the bible for a franchise of several films, television series, holiday TV specials, video games, books, merchandising, hotel chain, and theme parks, he took the package unsolicited to Columbia Pictures and set it up at Sony Pictures Animation where he became the first of several screenwriters on the project.

The development process ultimately went through six directors; in 2006, Anthony Stacchi and David Feiss became the first directors set to helm the film. They were replaced by Jill Culton in 2008, who was followed by Chris Jenkins, with Todd Wilderman in 2010. Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Sym-Bionic Titan took over as the sixth scheduled director, and made his feature directorial debut with the film.

In November 2011, Miley Cyrus was announced to voice Mavis, Dracula's teenaged daughter, but in February 2012, she was removed from the film. In August 2019, Cyrus admitted it was because of buying then-partner Liam Hemsworth a birthday cake in the shape of a penis and licking it. It was later announced that Selena Gomez would replace Cyrus. According to Tartakovsky his favorite Dracula was Bela Lugosi, especially in the context of Abbott and Costello. As a kid he really did not like horror movies, so he never really watched them. So he got introduced to all those characters through comedy, and so it was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Meet the Mummy, etc. As Tartakovsky said [in relation to making Hotel Transylvania]: "I don't want to scare anybody. I just want to make them laugh with these iconic characters."

Animation and design

Tartakovsky, who originates from a traditional animation background, reimagined the film to follow the energy, organic nature, and exaggeration of 2D animation, particularly as seen in the work of director Tex Avery. "I took all the aesthetics I like from 2-D and applied them here," he said. "I don't want to do animation to mimic reality. I want to push reality." Tartakovsky's process involved drawing over character models in order to achieve exaggerated poses, hoping to "bring a 2D drawing sensibility into the CG world" and "push the expressions of the characters." Character animator Bill Haller remarked that "20% of the effort went into tweaking the rig to more of a hand-drawn pose" when creating most of the shots.

Visual effects supervisor Dan Kramer stated that because most of the film's assets were created under a different director, they were initially hesitant to take the character animation off model, but admitted that "when [Tartakovsky] did draw overs, it was freeing for the animators. And it's changed my viewpoint in being a little looser." Bill Desowitz of Animation World Network described the process as "creating new pipeline, breaking rigs and coming up with various deforming tweaks to get the right squash-and-stretch in CG." "I wanted to have an imprint so you'd go, 'Well, only Genndy can make this," Tartakovsky explained. "It's hard, especially with CG, but I feel there's a lot of moments that feel that they're very me, so hopefully it'll feel different enough that it has a signature to it."

Soundtrack

• "Where Did the Time Go Girl (Party Version)" Written by Robert Smigel, Adam Sandler, and Dennis White. Produced by Static Revenger.
• "Daddy's Girl" Written by Adam Sandler and Robert Smigel. Performed by Adam Sandler.
• "Call Me Mavy" Performed by Traci L.
• "Problem (The Monster Remix)" Written by Henry Walter, Lukasz Gottwald, Becky G (as Becky Gomez) & will.i.am (as William Adams). Performed by Becky G featuring will.i.am.
• "Sexy and I Know It", performed by LMFAO
• "The Zing" Written by Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel, and Dennis White. Produced by Static Revenger. Performed by Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, CeeLo Green, Kevin James, and Selena Gomez.
• "Helpless", written and performed by Peter Tvrznik
• "Sweet 118", written by Andy Samberg, Stuart Hart and Trevor Simpson. Performed by Andy Samberg.
• "Hush, Little Baby", performed by Adam Sandler.
• "Monster Mash", performed by Bobby Pickett.

Release

Theatrical

Hotel Transylvania premiered on September 8, 2012, at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Home media

Hotel Transylvania was released on Blu-ray (2D and 3D) and DVD on January 29, 2013. It was accompanied by the short animated film, Goodnight Mr. Foot.

In April 2021, Sony signed a deal giving Disney access to their legacy content, including the Hotel Transylvania franchise to stream on Disney+ and Hulu and appear on Disney's linear television networks. Disney's access to Sony's titles would come following their availability on Netflix.

Box office

Hotel Transylvania earned $148.3 million in North America, and $210.1 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $358.4 million.

Hotel Transylvania topped the box office with $11 million on its first Friday, and $42.5 million domestically and $50.6 million worldwide for its opening weekend, which at the time of its release broke Sweet Home Alabamas record for the largest-grossing September opening, The film also earned the highest-grossing domestic debut for Sony Pictures Animation (also later overtaken by Hotel Transylvania 2). According to Sony's president of worldwide distribution, Rory Bruer, Sony was very satisfied with the film's performance, which was "beyond anyone's imagination, and the holds are ridiculous. It exceeds expectations in every new market it opens in." Hotel Transylvania was theatrically released in China on October 28, 2013, more than a year after the worldwide premiere, and contributed $11,180,000 to the overall gross.

Reception

Hotel Transylvania has an approval rating of 45% based on 142 professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of . Its critical consensus reads, "Hotel Transylvanias buoyant, giddy tone may please children, but it might be a little too loud and thinly-scripted for older audiences." Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned Hotel Transylvania a score of 47 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.

IGN editor Geoff Chapman rated the film 9 out of 10 and wrote "This is a fun film, full of quirky gags and lovable characters. There are a few songs that smack a bit like soundtrack marketing for the kids, and the story is of course fairly predictable, but this movie is about enjoying a fun journey with great characters. It's a romp that kids and families will all enjoy. Hotel Transylvania is definitely somewhere you'll want to check in."

Accolades

Other media

Main article: Hotel Transylvania

Sequels

Main article: Hotel Transylvania 2

The sequel, titled Hotel Transylvania 2, was released on September 25, 2015. Its story takes place seven years after the first film, with the hotel now open to human guests, and its owner, Count Dracula, being more preoccupied with the fact that his 5-year-old grandson is not a pure-blood vampire. The original crew and cast returned for the film, except CeeLo Green as the role of Murray, who was replaced by Keegan-Michael Key. New additions include Mel Brooks as Dracula's father, Vlad; Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally as Jonathan's parents, Mike and Linda; and Asher Blinkoff as Mavis and Johnny's half-human/half-vampire son, Dennis.

Hotel Transylvania 2 was followed by Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, released on July 13, 2018.

The fourth feature film in the series is Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, released as an Amazon Prime Video exclusive on January 14, 2022.

A fifth film is in development.

Television series

Main article: Hotel Transylvania: The Series

A television series based on the film premiered on June 25, 2017, and ended on October 29, 2020. Sony Pictures Television handled distribution in the United States, while Nelvana distributed the series outside the United States.

In June 2024, Motel Transylvania, a television series set to debut on Netflix in 2027, was announced. The series is set to focus on Dracula and Mavis opening a motel.

References

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