Actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers, seen in Paris in 2010, will star in a new TV drama based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. (François Durand/Getty Images)

Bram Stoker's Dracula will rise again, this time in a new TV drama starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the titular vampire.

Carnival Films and Television, the production company behind the crossover British hit Downton Abbey, has received the green light from U.S. broadcaster NBC for a 10-episode series based on Stoker's classic novel.

Set in London in the 1890s, Dracula will feature the famed vampire living a double life. Purportedly an American businessman introducing modern science to Victorian society, he is actually seeking revenge against the descendants of those who ruined his life centuries earlier. However, his plan is derailed when he falls in love.

NBC did not release an air date for the series, a co-production between Carnival, NBC the U.K.'s Sky Broadcasting and Flame Ventures. However, it is set to begin production this year.

Irish actor Meyers, who has balanced a career in film and television, is perhaps best known for playing King Henry VIII in the racy historical series The Tudors.

He previously won kudos for playing Elvis Presley in the miniseries Elvis and has starred in films like Match Point, Mission: Impossible III and Bend It Like Beckham.

"In the world of Twilight and True Blood and all the contemporized stories, we thought we'd go back to the original," NBC entertainment chair Bob Greenblatt told reporters Tuesday during the summer edition of the Television Critics Association Conference in Los Angeles, where the news was announced.

He added that the series would stay true to the time period but also look toward the future.

NBC is also working on another supernatural series: a dark, edgy reboot of The Munsters called Mockingbird Lane, starring Jerry O'Connell, Portia de Rossi and Eddie Izzard.