Epic Historical Drama · Feature or Limited Series
The life of Vlad Țepeș, ruler of Wallachia, told as an epic journey through 15th-century Europe: a borderland prince caught between the Ottoman Empire and the Hungarian Crown, who turned terror into a weapon to keep his country.
Between empires, betrayal and survival, one ruler turns terror into a weapon to defend his land.
Medieval Europe · Wallachia
A prince held hostage at the Ottoman court as a boy, then returned to rule a principality that survived only by playing two empires against each other.
In development · Co-producers welcome
Context
Vlad is a historical epic built on emotion, drama and political intrigue. It gives one of medieval Europe's most legendary and most misunderstood rulers the large-scale, nuanced treatment he has rarely received on screen.
Rather than reducing Vlad to a horror icon, the film examines the logic behind his decisions and places them in the political and social reality of the time: the clash of empires, internal betrayal by the boyars, and the brutal arithmetic of medieval power.
Global audiences continue to reward complex anti-heroes, morally ambiguous leaders and richly built historical worlds. The name recognition is already there: Vlad is one of the few medieval rulers a worldwide audience can identify without any setup.
Historical spine
The screenplay is dramatised, but anchored in documented events. These are the moments the structure is built around.
The film treats the German-language pamphlets of the 1460s and 1470s as a subject in themselves: the earliest surviving portrait of Vlad is propaganda produced by his enemies. Bram Stoker borrowed the name for his 1897 novel; how much else he took from the historical ruler is still debated by historians, and the film does not pretend to settle it.
Synopsis
Vlad follows its subject from hostage prince to feared ruler, through betrayal, war, shifting alliances and the rules of medieval power. Each chapter tightens the tension between justice, cruelty and survival, until every remaining choice carries an irreversible cost.
Story focus
The narrative moves past the cliché to show a complex leader holding a borderland together between two empires. It opens up a crucial and under-filmed period of European history and invites the audience to re-examine what it thinks it already knows.
The dramatic question is not whether Vlad was cruel. It is what a ruler owes his country when every available option is monstrous.
Core promise
A new perspective on one of history's most controversial rulers: not a cartoon villain, but a man shaped by impossible choices, brutal politics and a relentless struggle for survival.
It is time to give the story the cinematic recognition it has never properly had.
Vision
Creative vision
A character-driven epic about the tension between justice, cruelty and survival in medieval leadership, and about how a ruler is pushed into methods that will define him for five hundred years.
The visual language sets large-scale battlefields against intimate candle-lit interiors, with compositions that hold brutality and vulnerability in the same frame.
Key themes
Format & audience
Type & proposal
The material sustains either a self-contained epic feature or an extended limited series, where the political intrigue, the regional alliances and the evolution of the character across three reigns have room to breathe.
Main audience
Scale & ambition
Financial frame
The project is built with a value proposition for both a traditional theatrical release and premium VOD, with room for franchise expansion: prequel, spin-off series, or a companion documentary on the gap between the historical record and the legend.
Positioning & upside
A line-by-line budget, financing structure and recoupment waterfall are available in the producer package for interested partners.
Creative team
Director
Graduate of UNATC in Film Directing (2011–2014) under Professor Laurențiu Damian, with a Master's in Film Directing (2014–2016). Working at StudioSet since 2016.
Producer
Graduate of the Faculty of Administration and Business at the University of Bucharest, currently in Master's studies at UNAP (Crisis Management and Conflict Prevention) and at UNATC I.L. Caragiale in Film Production.
Questions
No. The project is about the historical ruler of Wallachia, not about the vampire. The Dracula association is acknowledged inside the story, because the pamphlets that created it are part of the plot, but the film contains no supernatural element.
Both versions are developed. The feature covers the 1456 to 1462 reign as a single arc. The limited series, four to six episodes, adds the hostage years and the captivity in Hungary. The format follows the partner.
The structure follows the documented chronology, and the major events, the night attack of 1462 among them, are treated as they are recorded. Private scenes and dialogue are dramatised. Where the sources disagree, the film shows the disagreement rather than picking a version.
Script development. A treatment, a director's statement and a lookbook exist. Palafilm is looking for co-production partners, historical research support and development financing.
Primarily in Romania, where the historical locations and the crew base are. European co-production partners can bring additional territories into the plan.
Elsewhere on the slate
Partnership & contact
Palafilm is seeking international co-producers, sales agents, funds and platforms for a bold, grounded reinterpretation of Vlad Țepeș for a global audience. The package includes this pitch, an extended treatment, a lookbook, the director's statement and a scalable budget built around a $10M production.
Full bios, previous work, references and a detailed financial deck are available on request.