Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire Series Finds Its Lestat

A new adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire is being adapted as a TV series for AMC, with that project finding its Lestat with Australian actor Sam Reid, who was recently seen in projects like The Drover's Wife and The Hunting. The eight-episode debut season of the adaptation is expected to start production by the end of the year, potentially debuting in 2022. The original Rice novel was adapted into a film in 1994, with Tom Cruise starring as Lestat and Brad Pitt playing Louis, which will likely be another role that audiences are looking forward to discovering will be performed by. Director Alan Taylor is currently attached to helm the project.

Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles are seminal pieces of vampire fiction, which have earned a variety of adaptations over the years. In the 2000s and 2010s, the Twilight film franchise and HBO's True Blood helped revive interest in the vampire genre, resulting in a surge of similar projects hitting the market. Despite that popularity, Rice's novels were absent from that realm, as the author herself was in the process of securing the rights for adaptations of her own works.

Luckily, Interview with the Vampire is only one of multiple Rice projects AMC is developing, as the network is also working on The Vampire Chronicles and The Lives of the Mayfair Witches TV series.

"This is a day we have been looking forward to since we acquired this legendary Anne Rice collection a little more than a year ago," Dan McDermott, president of original programming at AMC Networks and AMC Studios, shared earlier this year. "This story already has millions of fans in the U.S. and around the world, we can't wait to share this new interpretation of the classic brought to life by Rolin and [producer] Mark [Johnson], as we continue to work on developing the entire collection. With The Walking Dead, this Anne Rice collection, and our majority stake in Agatha Christie Limited through our own Acorn TV, we are proud to have the stewardship of three unique, fan-forward, and beloved franchises and universes, which we are only just beginning to explore. We are also thrilled to have Mark, a world-class producer we have previously worked with on iconic series like Breaking Bad, Rectify, Halt and Catch Fire, and Better Call Saul on board at the helm of our efforts to develop an entire Anne Rice universe, with significant aspirations for these beloved stories and characters."

Stay tuned for details on the Interview with the Vampire TV series.

Are you looking forward to the project? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!