I watched this almost decade-old reiteration of the tired and beaten Dracula story the other night strictly because a trailer seen on YouTube featured the great Charles Dance in a role that mesmerized me. Let’s be real: that man could impart hypnotic gravitas to “Row, row, row your Boat, gently down the stream” if he wanted to do so.
In the film, which starred Luke Evans (heaven help us) as Vlad the winsome, sympathetic “Family Man” Impaler, Charles Dance played the supposedly “original” vampire who, being under a demon’s curse, converted Luke Evans to eternal blood-hunger after being approached for a bit of undead deal-making in the former’s ghoulish cave atop Broken Tooth Mountain. Charles Dance infuses his cave scenes with genuine chills, but that’s about the last we see of him in the production and the rest of the flick drops off a cliff faster than a ton of bat guano hitting the bottom of an underground cavern. It stinks. Not the aforementioned guano (which likely does have a piquant fragrance), but the rest of the movie.
Luke Evans is a capable actor, but he ain’t got the range of a Safety Dance, much less a Charles Dance.
Ostensibly, the back-story of Dance’s “Ground Zero Bloodsucker” was supposed to be at the heart of what the Marvel folk wanted to establish as their Dark Universe franchise. The franchise failed and is, for all intents and harbor porpoises, defunct, but I agree with Den of Geek and believe that a well-written origin story about Dance’s enigmatic Dracula-maker would be a big fat hit across all outlets.
Better strike while the iron is hot, Marvel mavens. Unlike his mercurial character, Mr. Dance is not going to be scrutinizing comely necks and likely jugular veins forever,
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Jonathan Kieran 
Aaaaaah Charles Dance, my favourite villain. LOVED him in Bleak House. And he was a wonderful Lord Havelock Vetenari in Going Postal. Though he is a diverse actor, over here we love him best as villain, I’m afraid. And doesn’t his name alone have that certain ring?