Hotel Transylvania: Transformania Trailer Adds A New Monster To The Dracula Family

With the summer movie season upon us, many of us are getting ready to enjoy our favorite franchises on the big screen again, some of which with the whole family. One exciting offering will be the final chapter to Sony Animation’s Hotel Transylvania. We’ve just received our first look at the fourth movie, Hotel Transylvania: Transformania and it looks to be filled with laughs… and a brand new monster by a fan-favorite character.

The first trailer for Hotel Transylvania: Transformania has Drac celebrating the 125th year in business for the monster hotel with a stunning party with all of the major characters from the franchise. Then we learn that Andy Samberg’s character Johnny is still super self-conscious about being the odd man out in the family with Selena Gomez’s Mavis. So, he decides to try to be a monster himself, though it doesn’t seem to turn out as planned.

Johnny then turns to Jim Gaffigan’s Van Helsing to help him become a monster in his own right using something called the “Monsterfication Ray.” It doesn’t work quite right on Johnny… because of course it doesn’t and the powers of ray boomerangs itself throughout the hotel. Johnny turns into a host of different monsters before hitting Dracula and turning him human, as Johnny remains a monster. Oops.

Dracula is understandably peeved by his son-in-law as he takes the form of an old man, and by the above trailer it looks like the “Monsterfication Ray” will be causing tons of other troubles throughout the hotel. We even get too good of a look at David Spade’s Invisible Man, who has apparently been naked this whole time. It’s a fun first look at Hotel Transylvania: Transformania ahead of its release this July alongside Snake Eyes and M. Night Shyamalan’s Old.

Transformania follows 2018’s Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, which had the Count, his family and friends going on a cruise and meeting the Van Helsing family. It’s there where Drac meets a love of his own in Kathryn Hahn’s Ericka Van Helsing, who is primed to return for this movie fresh off her wicked role in Marvel’s Wandavision. The movie also sees the return of the voice talents of Kevin James, Fran Drescher, Steve Buscemi, Keegan-Michael Key, though Adam Sandler will be replaced by Brian Hull.

The first trailer only offers a fun appetizer to what’s to come in the Hotel Transylvania, but it looks like it will lean into some fun gags from Freaky Friday where Johnny and Dracula will have to be in each other’s shoes, between monster and human. It’s always fun to see those two characters play off each other, and we’re curious how that may conclude the franchise nearly a decade since the Sony movies began. And coming fresh off the release of Sony Animation’s hit Mitchells vs the Machines, we’re excited to see what’s next from the studio.

Hotel Transylvania: Transformania hits theaters on July 23 and check out what other movies to look forward to in the coming months with the 2021 movie release schedule here on CinemaBlend.

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.