A few years back, author Anne Rice announced that she was going to try and turn her multi-book Vampire Chronicles series into a show. “Over the years you all have told me how much you want to see a Game of Thrones-style faithful rendering of this material, and how much you want for the series to remain in my control,” she wrote to her fans. “Well, I have heard you. I have always heard you. What you want is what I want.”
With fantasy and sci-fi shows enjoying a lot of attention these days, the time certainly seems right for a Vampire Chronicles series, which (mostly) follows the adventures of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, who passes his eternal life meeting lots of interesting people and killing several of them. For a while, it looked like the show was going to go forward on Hulu — they had a showrunner and everything — but now, Variety reports that it didn’t pan out, and that Rice and her team are once again shopping the project around Hollywood.
Here’s the deal Rice and company are pitching to any interested buyer: for $30 to $40 million, they can have the rights — in perpetuity — to all 11 of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles books, plus the rights to her Mayfair Witches books, which take place in the same universe. I assume the deal would also include whatever production team Rice and her son Christopher, with whom she wrote a detailed outline for the series, have already put together.
“A television series of the highest quality is now my dream for Lestat, Louis, Armand, Marius and the entire tribe,” Rice wrote back when this project was first getting underway. “In this the new Golden Age of television, such a series is THE way to let the entire story of the vampires unfold.”
She should have plenty of options. The content is probably too adult for Disney+, but maybe HBO Max would be interested? Apple TV+ is still looking to make its mark. Might AMC move from the zombies on The Walking Dead to vampires? More as it develops.
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