Interview with the Vampire Set for AMC Release

Interview with the Vampire is slated for release on AMC on the 2nd of October 2022. The show will also feature on AMC+, the video-on-demand streaming service.

The TV series stars Sam Reid, Jacob Anderson, Bailey Bass, and Assad Zaman and will encompass seven episodes.

A popular theme in modern entertainment

Vampire mythology has had a huge impact on modern entertainment. Particularly thanks to the highly popular Twilight series of films, which combined horror with romance. Indeed, the genre has also shown itself to be highly flexible, exemplified by the 2022 horror-comedy Day Shift, which stars Jamie Foxx as a vampire hunter.

The horror element of the vampire subgenre makes it tailor-made for the video game industry with games such as the open-world vampire survival game V Rising recording one million sales in the first week of its release. The vampire theme is also prevalent in the iGaming sector through slot games such as Blood Suckers, which capitalises on the popularity of the genre and is included on the list of the best RTP slots, which are slot games with the best return to player percentage.

The value of an all-star cast

Interview with the Vampire is based on the gothic novel of the same name by Anne Rice, which was published in 1976 and there will inevitably be comparisons with the 1993 film, which starred Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and Christian Slater. The film was a critical and commercial success, receiving two Oscar nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Original Score and grossing almost £200 million at the box office worldwide. However, none of the stars of the original will feature in the TV series, which is hoping to tap into the current trend for slow-burning TV shows which allows for more complex plot development and the opportunity to explore the original story. There is also the potential to portray other novels in the Vampire Chronicles series as AMC has acquired the rights to an extensive back catalogue amounting to 18 of Rice’s novels.

While the vampire theme can generate intense interest, movie studios are not always able to replicate the success of previous films. This is demonstrated by The Queen of the Damned, the sequel to Interview with the Vampire. Based on a novel by Anne Rice, also entitled The Queen of the Damned, the film starred Stuart Townsend, late R&B singer Aaliyah, Marguerite Moreau and Vincent Pérez. The film, without the all-star cast of the original movie, struggled at the box office, making just over £40 million globally, although Aaliyah did win praise for her performance as Akasha, the queen of the vampires, which is rated as one of the best portrayals.

The season’s best fantasy franchise reboot?

However, with Interview with the Vampire already being described as the season’s best fantasy franchise reboot, American playwright Rolin Jones looks to have created the sort of storyline Rice would be proud of. Jones is well-aware of the responsibility inherent in portraying what he calls the finest vampire novel ever written: “We know how much this book and the ones that follow mean to their massive fan base. We feel you over our shoulders as we tend the Savage Garden. Louis and Lestat are coming out of hiding and we can’t wait to reunite them with you.”

If Interview with the Vampire proves to be a success, there is plenty of potential for further dramatizations as Anne Rice wrote a total of thirteen novels as part of her The Vampire Chronicles series. As AMC has already secured the rights to the collection of novels, there is nothing standing in the way of another long-running and globally popular vampire show.