Forget zombies — it’s all about vampires again. Paramount Television and Anonymous Content have optioned the rights to Anne Rice’s popular book series The Vampire Chronicles, Variety reports.
Rice has penned a dozen books in the best-selling series, thus providing more than enough content from which to draw for a television adaptation. Christopher Rice — Anne’s son and a best-selling author of A Density of Souls, The Snow Garden, and The Moonlit Earth — will write the series. Both mother and son will serve as executive producers, alongside David Kanter and Steve Golin of Anonymous Content.
The Vampire Chronicles revolves around Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman who became a vampire in the 18th century, and embarks on adventures around the world. This won’t be the first time the stories have been translated to the screen. The first book in the series, Interview with the Vampire, was released in 1976, and was the basis for the 1994 film starring Tom Cruise (who played Lestat), Brad Pitt, Christian Slater, Antonio Banderas, and a young Kirsten Dunst. The Queen of the Damned, the third novel in the series (1988), was also turned into a movie in 2002, starring Stuart Townsend and the late Aaliyah.
The books are known for their homoerotic overtones. Rice told Time magazine back in 2008 that the vampire characters are a metaphor for lost souls.
Amy Powell, president of Paramount TV, says Rice has “created the paradigm against which all vampire stories are measured. The rich and vast world she has created with The Vampire Chronicles is unmatched and sophisticated, with ’90s gothic undertones that will be perfectly suited to captive audiences.”
Kanter adds that it is a “tremendous responsibility” to bring the books to television, and to please the worldwide readership whose “connections to the books and their author are deep and abiding.”
Rice calls it a “dream come true” to bring Lestat to life for the fans who have been asking to see him on screen for years. Rice regained theatrical rights to the novels last November.
Paramount TV and Anonymous Content are also responsible for hits like True Detective, Quarry, and the latest Netflix breakout hit original series, 13 Reasons Why. There’s no confirmation yet when the series might be in development, and on which network it might air.
