Vampire Academy series will have “Game of Thrones palace intrigue”

Peacock’s new Vampire Academy show will have “Game of Thrones palace intrigue” and will basically be “modern-day Bridgerton with vampires.”

The other day, Peacock announced that it was moving forward with a show based on Richelle Mead’s popular Vampire Academy novels, a YA series about a school where noble vampires get educated and human-vampire hybrids called Dhampirs are trained to protect them. It comes at a new boom time for vampires, with What We Do In The Shadows about to return on FX and AMC making a series based on Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.

But the new show is also happening in the shadow of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which changed the game for genre series by being bigger, better produced, and more popular than anything that came before. That’s on the writers’ minds as they craft the new series. “We talk in the writers’ room about how we really want to make sure that episodically we hit the friendship and the romance and the palace fun, but we also really want to have our kind of Game of Thrones palace intrigue,” producer Julie Plec told Entertainment Weekly. “I thought, ‘This is modern-day Bridgerton with vampires.’ Who’s not going to want to see that?”

For reference, Vampire Diaries is about a Dhampir and noble vampire named Rose Hathaway and Lissa Dragomir (to be played by Sisi Stringer and Daniela Nieves). The two have been friends since childhood, but Dhampirs and noble-born vampires fill very different positions in society, so their bond will be challenged. “It’s a story about two young women who have been friends since the sandbox,” Plec said. “As they grow up and get closer to entering real society, what society dictates about what their roles are supposed to be threatens to put a wedge in the success of their friendship.”

Plec also created the successful Vampire Diaries TV show, so she has experience in this field. The new job has been a long time coming for her. “I read [Mead’s novels] before Vampire Diaries came into my world and just really enjoyed the series and always thought, ‘Gosh, one day I’d really love to work on a show like this,'” she said.

There’s no word on when Vampire Academy will debut on Peacock, but we have met the cast, so things are clearly moving along:

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h/t SyFy Wire