It’s time for a change of scenery as Dracula and the rest of the Hotel Transylvania monsters head out on their first vacation in Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. We recently got invited a special presentation event at Sony Pictures Animation which showed off some early footage of the movie and included a short Q&A with Genndy Tartakovsky (Director and Writer), Selena Gomez (Mavis), Andy Samberg (Johnny), Keegan-Michael Key (Murray the Mummy) and Kathryn Hahn (Ericka Van Helsing).
After finishing up 2015’s Hotel Transylvania 2, Genndy had originally planned on stepping away from Hotel Transylvania. Or at least that was his plan, “As the story goes, making a feature film is both fun and difficult. So, after the second movie, I was done. I said never again,” said Genndy, who continued, “But that year, my family surprised me with a cruise and something clicked…it would make a good setting for a monster family.” From there Genndy would get to work on writing up a script for the third movie along with Michael McCullers.
From there we were shown various clips from the movie. The first takes place in the 1800’s as Dracula, Frank, Wayne and Murray are on a train when suddenly Abraham Van Helsing (voiced by Jim Gaffigan) appears hunting down the monsters. After a short chase scene, Dracula and Van Helsing face off as it’s revealed that Van Helsing’s family has for centuries tried to take down Dracula and has failed time and time again, which is followed by quick transitions of Van Helsing just failing short every time (think Wile E. Coyote always failing to capture the roadrunner and falling down the cliff).
The next clip shown showed a different side of Dracula who is shown more depressed and lonely as everyone around his has someone. Dracula is shown using a dating app for monsters called Zingr, he is connected to a witch who looks nothing like her picture in the app and Mavis walks in as the two talk while Dracula tries to hide his feelings and hang up on the witch. We then cut to a scene where the Monsters are traveling on a plane run by Gremlins which is falling apart, while the Gremlins run some havoc while “taking” care of the passengers we see Dennis sneaking around to check on his pet he had snuck aboard all before the plane nosedives arriving at its destination.
Finally the last scene we were shown, follows Dracula who has fallen for Erica, the ships captain and unknown to the passengers the granddaughter of Abraham Van Helsing. It begins as we see Dracula dancing happily with Blobby as Erica tries to secretly destroy Dracula but each times she keeps missing and instead it’s Blobby getting hit by a variety of items including a crane, boat and flare gun but my favorite moment in the entire clip is the moment Wayne and Wanda head to the day care area and find out they can leave their kids with the ships crew and finally have a moment for themselves which leaves them wondering what can they do now that they are finally free, at least for the day. This leads up to a scene where we are shown Atlantis, which is a gambling resort but before the cruise ship docks they are greeted by a Kraken (voiced by Joe Jonas) who greets the passengers with a song.
Afterward, the cast was asked a few questions which you can listen to here.
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation definitely a movie to look forward to watching this Summer.