It wasn’t too long ago that we heard that Universal had snapped up the rights to Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles, with The Fault In Our Stars‘ Josh Boone working on a script to reboot the franchise. Well, there’s been a significant development, and it could be great news for fans of the series.
The author took to Facebook to announce that she’s got the rights back, and she’s hard at work on bringing her characters to the screen, but she’s aiming for TV, not film.
“The theatrical rights to the Vampire Chronicles are once again in my hands, free and clear! I could not be more excited about this!” she wrote. “A television series of the highest quality is now my dream for Lestat, Louis, Armand, Marius and the entire tribe. In this the new Golden Age of television, such a series is THE way to let the entire story of the vampires unfold.”
She went on to confirm that she is working on a script with her son, author Christopher Rice, for a pilot and a series beyond that, and that she’s planning on starting with the second novel in the series: The Vampire Lestat. While Interview With The Vampire is very much Louis’ story, The Vampire Lestat is the titular bloodsucker’s retort, his life story told in his voice, and it’s where you can really see just how much Rice loves the character. From that point on, Lestat is very much the centre of the Vampire Chronicles.
“As many of you know, Universal Studios and Imagine Entertainment had optioned the series to develop motion pictures from it, and though we had the pleasure of working with many fine people in connection with this plan, it did not work out,” she explained. “It is, more than ever, abundantly clear that television is where the vampires belong.”
Boone had previously Tweeted that he wanted Jared Leto for the role of Lestat, saying “Lestat – there can be only one. #JaredLeto” but Rice presumably has her own ideas about who should play the Brat Prince. Who do you think would be best suited for the role?
Prince Lestat And The Realms Of Atlantis is available 29 November from Chatto & Windus. Keep up with the latest genre news with the new issue of SciFiNow.
