Before there was Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, there was Anne Rice and her book series The Vampire Chronicles. Wildly popular, the concept was adapted for the screen by the author and released in cinemas as Interview With The Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles in 1994, directed by Neil Jordan, and starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst. A second adaptation – Queen Of The Damned was released in 2002, but proved to be less of a hit. The whole thing is now resurfacing, however, as filmmaker Josh Boone (The Fault In Our Stars) is confirmed as heading up an Interview With The Vampire reboot.
Boone is clearly in high demand, with several projects in the works – including X-Men: The New Mutants and The Stand. The Interview With The Vampire reboot has been on the cards for some time now, with Brian Grazer producing for Imagine Entertainment, but information had been scarce until Josh Boone provided a status update to Nightmare Magazine in March of this year.
“I’m working with the most incredible producers. Brian Grazer and Erica Huggins and Anna Culp at Imagine and Alex Kurtzman and Jeb Brody at Secret Hideout. Amazing people. We’re working on the first draft for Universal. We’re really focusing on The Vampire Lestat, but we’re using elements from some of the other books as well….Anne [Rice] is a genius, fiercely intelligent. Obviously, I’m attached to direct that one as well.
“With any of these projects that are so big and expensive like Vampire Chronicles or The Stand, it’ll probably take a couple of years for any of these things to come together and actually get made just because of how expensive it is to bring these properties to the screen and how complicated the adaptation process is. We have a vision for a trilogy of Vampire Chronicles films and I hope also a spinoff television series to explore all the side characters and their back stories. That’s the dream. We’ll see what happens.”
Boone also treated his Instagram followers to a shot of a screenplay draft.
Inevitably, there will be those that bemoan the idea of another reboot, but it could be argued that Interview With The Vampire is the exception to the rule. With a 13 book series to draw upon as source material, the cinematic adaptations of this work thus far have barely scratched the surface. In addition, the most successful adaptation – 1994’s Interview With The Vampire – was adapted by the author herself, whereas this project is penned by Boone and Jill Killington. An alternative perspective on the stories is therefore guaranteed.
The big question will be, in Josh Boone’s Interview With The Vampire, who will play the iconic Lestat? It will take a performer of a certain calibre to assume the mantle of a role made famous by Tom Cruise, over 20 years ago. Without doubt, this production process will be fascinating to watch.
