Vampires have a remarkably long life, and apparently a very long shelf life as well.
Twilight mania has finally settled and vampires don’t seem to be quite as fashionable anymore, but that looks as though it’s all about to change. Anne Rice is once again in control of the rights to the Vampire Chronicles and is planning on making it into a television series.
Universal picked up the rights the their characters and the stories in 2014, but let it lapse until Rice announced on her Facebook page, “The theatrical rights to the Vampire Chronicles are once again in my hands, free and clear!” The fans have longed for a television series for years and now it appears their wishes will finally come true.
Rice will be developing the pilot script with her son, novelist and columnist, Christopher Rice. They also plan on developing an outline for an ongoing show. Rice’s latest book, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis is the most recent in a series which comprises of 13 main books and several spin offs, so there is more than enough content to create a television series.
The series is planned to begin with the events of the second novel, which follows Vampire Lestat, who is a french nobleman that is turned into a vampire in the 18th century. Rice says, “I could not be more excited about this! A television series of the highest quality is now my dream for Lestat, Louis, Armand, Marius and the entire tribe.”
Warner Brothers originally held the theatrical release of the Vampire Chronicles for years with the hopes that it would launch as a successful film franchise. 1994’s Interview with a Vampire starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt was a huge success and the most famous adaptation of Rice’s work.
Pitt and Cruise never opted to make a sequel, and a second film entitled Queen of the Damned was made using a different cast. Alas, it was a flop and hope for a successful franchise was lost. Let’s hope television is more promising for Rice.
Now is the perfect time for a new vampire show as True Blood has finished and The Vampire Diaries is currently airing its final season. Rice agrees that “it is, more than ever, abundantly clear that television is where the vampires belong.”