Jonathan Rhys Meyers to star in NBC's "Dracula"

(CBS News) Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who played King Henry VIII on "The Tudors," is sinking his teeth into another period role.

NBC has given the green light to "Dracula," a new take on the classic Bram Stoker tale, with Meyers playing the titular bloodsucker.

Pictures: NBC stars at the Television Critics Assocation

Deadline reports the show will be set in London in the 1890s, where Dracula is posing as an American businessman who maintains he wants to bring modern science to Victorian society. In reality, he hopes to wreak revenge on the people who ruined his life centuries earlier. This plan, however, hits a snag when he falls in love with a woman who seems to be the reincarnation of his dead wife.

The network has ordered 10 episodes of the drama. It will not shoot a pilot, and will instead go straight to series.

"In the world of Twilight and True Blood and all the contemporized stories, we thought we'd go back to the original," NBC Entertainment president Bob Greenblat told reporters Tuesday at a meeting of the Television Critics Association (TCA), according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Production on "Dracula" will reportedly begin later this year.