TV
Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles” Acquired by AMC for Film and Television Projects
As we reported last year, Anne Rice was shopping around a massive television and film package for both The Vampire Chronicles and The Lives of the Mayfair Witches, and Variety reports today that AMC Networks has acquired the package and therefore landed the rights to all novels in both series’.
Variety explains, “AMC now holds the comprehensive rights for the much sought-after intellectual property and will develop film and television projects for its own television networks and streaming services under the AMC Studios umbrella as well as external partner licensing. Anne Rice and her son Christopher Rice will serve as executive producers on all series and films developed under the deal.”
“The deal encompasses 18 titles between the two book series, which together have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide,” the site adds.
“It’s always been my dream to see the worlds of my two biggest series united under a single roof so that filmmakers could explore the expansive and interconnected universe of my vampires and witches,” said Anne Rice. “That dream is now a reality, and the result is one of the most significant and thrilling deals of my long career.”
Rolin Jones (“Friday Night Lights”) is on board to develop these projects for AMC.
The Anne Rice catalog that AMC Networks is acquiring features The Vampire Chronicles series: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch The Devil, The Vampire Armand, Pandora, Vittorio the Vampire, Blood and Gold, Prince Lestat, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, and Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat; The Lives of The Mayfair Witches series: The Witching Hour, Lasher, Taltos; and The Vampire Chronicles/The Lives Of The Mayfair Witches crossover novels: Merrick, Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle.
TV
Don’t Forget There’s an “Alien” TV Series Too! Here’s the Latest Update
There’s a lot going on in the world of Alien at the moment. The original classic is returning to theaters, for starters, and the Xenomorphs will be fighting Marvel’s superheroes in the upcoming mashup comic Aliens vs. Avengers. Of course, the main event for 2024 is Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, a brand new big screen movie set between Alien and Aliens!
With so much going on, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that Disney is also working on an “Alien” television series, in the works for FX from creator Noah Hawley (“Legion”).
The Alien franchise’s first ever television series is likely to arrive sometime in 2025, set to be the first story in the franchise that takes place on Earth, roughly 70 years in the future.
FX teases, “Expect a scary thrill ride set not too far in the future here on Earth.”
So what’s the latest on the “Alien” TV series? Deadline reports today that filming is underway in Thailand, and Sandra Yi Sencindiver (“Foundation”) is the latest actor to sign on.
According to Deadline’s report this morning, the series is set 30 years before the events of the original Alien – Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, meanwhile, takes place 20 years *after* the events of Ridley Scott’s Alien – dealing with “the emergence of the story’s infamous Weyland-Yutani Corporation and the race between corporations to create new android life.”
Deadline adds in today’s casting report, “We understand that Sencindiver appears in multiple eps and will play a senior member of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.”
Sydney Chandler (Don’t Worry Darling), Babou Ceesay (“Guerrilla”), Jonathan Ajayi (“Wonder Woman 1984”), Erana James (“Uproar”), Lily Newmark (“Sex Education”), Diêm Camille (“Washington Black”), Adrian Edmondson (“War & Peace”), Timothy Olyphant (“Fargo”), David Rysdahl (“Fargo”), Essie Davis (The Babadook), Alex Lawther (The End of the F*cking World), Samuel Blenkin (“Black Mirror”), Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger), and Moe Bar-El (The Peripheral) star in the upcoming sci-fi/horror series.
Sydney Chandler is playing a character named Wendy in the series, said to be “a hybrid, a meta-human who has the brain and consciousness of a child but the body of an adult.”
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