Interview With the Vampire Showrunner Says AMC Plans to Adapt All of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles Books

In 2020, AMC acquired the rights to 18 of novelist Anne Rice’s books, including the Vampire Chronicles series as well as the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy. Since then, the network has announced adaptations connected to both of those series, the upcoming Interview With the Vampire and Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches. But while those two series, Interview set to debut in October and Mayfair following closely after in early 2023, are just the start and will only begin to scratch the surface of the first books in those respective series, according to Interview With the Vampire showrunner Rolin Jones, AMC wants to bring all of the books to life.

During AMC’s recent presentation at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Jones was asked how much of the Interview With the Vampire novel the show’s first season will cover. Jones explained that while the first season will cover just half of that novel, the intent is to go much further in subsequent possible seasons.

“AMC has bought all of the books and AMC wants to make all of the books,” Jones said.

Series star Sam Reid, who plays Lestat de Lioncourt, further explained how Interview With the Vampire will be able to create a cohesive story utilizing the 13 novels in the Vampire Chronicles series, something the 1994 film adaptation couldn’t do.

“What we do in this version of Interview With the Vampire is look at an entire series of books,” Reid said. “When that film came out, Rice was still writing them, so they didn’t have perspective of the entire work. And now we do have that perspective. And so, when we’re looking at character arcs, we’re looking at a much broader scale. So, it is a different feeling than a 90-minute film.”

Beyond Interview With the Vampire, president of entertainment and AMC Studios at AMC Networks Dan McDermott has previously indicated that the network is interested in creating an actual cinematic universe of Rice’s works in the vein of the MCU.

“We have other projects that are in development,” McDermott told Variety. “They’re sort of unofficial right. now, but we really plan to have five or six series in that universe over the next five or six years. And there will be an opportunity to pull characters from different shows and do what we refer to as our ‘all-star’ original series, taking supporting characters and maybe a lead character from one or two shows and doing original series that will be based in the Anne Rice universe.”

He continued, “The best model would be an Avengers-style series, where you take characters from different shows and bring them together and you tell an original story using all of them and their backstory and the mythology. The objective is to honor everything about the source material and the characters’ backstories and mythologies as well. But I think that’s a really exciting proposition.”

Interview With the Vampire is set to debut on October 2nd on AMC and AMC+

Are you looking forward to Interview With the Vampire? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @lifeinpolaroid!