Hulu puts a stake though the heart of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles TV series.
Bad news, thirsty Lestatians: according to Deadline, streaming giant Hulu will not be moving forward with a planned TV series based on horror queen Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. The wildly popular series of homoerotic vampire novels—centered around the sexily villainous Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned into a vampire in the 18th century—which began with 1976’s Interview with the Vampire and continued though twelve further installments, have sold almost 100 million copies worldwide and spawned (sired?) two movies, making the franchise a bonafide phenomenon. And yet.
Paramount TV and Anonymous optioned the series back in 2017 and for a hot minute Brian Fuller (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, American Gods) was attached as showrunner, which, given Fuller’s gleefully macabre, gorgeously gory sensibilities, seems like an inspired pairing. Sadly, it wasn’t to be—Fuller exited the project soon after. Hulu came on board in the summer of 2018 and right up to a couple of weeks ago it seemed like things might still be progressing, with the following cryptic note being published on The Vampire Chronicles Facebook page:
“To all the wonderful, loyal and steadfast supporters of this page and of this show. We realize it’s been some time since we’ve given you an update. Please allow me to assure you that magnificently exciting things are happening behind the scenes and we are dyyyyyyyyyying to talk to you about them. But in this particular moment, we are sworn to secrecy. The minute, and I assure you, the MINUTE, we are free to discuss the latest developments, many of them the most exciting since we began work on this, we will do so, and we will do so here. This page is not dead. Like Lestat, this project will live forever. We know you thirst, and we, Lestat and all the others who share the dark gift shall satisfy that thirst very soon.”
Alas, it now seems that we’ll all have to wait a little longer to see Lestat’s small screen debut.
Incidentally, if you haven’t seen bewigged, peak-of-his-powers Tom Cruise masticating the scenery in Neil Jordan’s marvelously OTT 1994 adaptation of Interview with the Vampire, well, I really don’t know what you’ve been doing with your life.
[via Deadline]
