Reginald the Vampire: Mandela Van Peebles, Em Haine & five more join Jacob Batalon series

Last August, we heard that Jacob Batalon, who played Peter Parker’s best friend Ned in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far from Home, and Spider-Man: No Way Home (with appearances in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame along the way), was taking the title role in the Syfy series Reginald the Vampire, which is based on author Johnny B. Truant’s Fat Vampire series of novels. Since then, Syfy has been busy building a supporting cast around Batalon. Mandela Van Peebles (Jigsaw) and Em Haine (Fargo) have signed on to play series regular roles in the series, while Aren Buchholz (Supernatural), Savannah Basley (SurrealEstate), Georgia Waters (Siren), and newcomer Marguerite Hanna have recurring roles.

Sean Yves Lessard (Heartland) is in the cast as well. While it’s not clear if he has regular or recurring status, we do know who he’s playing. Deadline says his character is “Lebron. Immaculately dressed, this vampire is someone you don’t want to mess with as he delivers a message on behalf of his terrifying boss.”

Syfy has ordered 10 episodes of the show, which is described as an “hourlong dramedy”. Reginald the Vampire will center on

an unlikely hero, Reginald Baskin (Batalon) who tumbles headlong into a world populated by beautiful, fit and vain vampires as an unlikely hero who will have to navigate every kind of obstacle — the girl he loves but can’t be with, a bully manager at work and the vampire chieftain who wants him dead. Fortunately, Reginald discovers he has a few unrecognized powers of his own.

Van Peebles is playing Maurice Miller, “who finds himself in the least expected circumstance, vampire life coach for Reginald. Which is complicated.” Haine is Sarah Kinney, “Reginald’s human co-worker at the Slushy Shack. She is smart, funny and learning how to fight for the dreams that are important to her.” Bucholz plays Todd, “Reginald’s manager at the Slushy Shack.” Basley’s Angela is “an ancient vampire of great power.” Waters is Penelope, “dangerous and beautiful vampire.” Hanna’s character is Ashley, “a co-worker at the Slushy Shack and a lover of conspiracy theories and urban legends with a deadpan sense of humor.”

The series is coming to us from Great Pacific Media and Modern Story Company. Harley Peyton, fresh off the Chucky series, will write, executive produce, and serve as showrunner on Reginald the Vampire. Jeremiah Chechik will executive produce and direct. Todd Berger and Lindsay Macadam are also on board as executive producers, with Julie DeCresce as co-executive producer.

The Fat Vampire series currently consists of six novels: Fat Vampire, Tastes Like Chicken, All You Can Eat, Harder Better Fatter Stronger, Fatpocalypse, and Survival of the Fattest. (Get them on Kindle HERE.) There was also a three-book spin-off about The Vampire Maurice. Here’s the description of the first Fat Vampire book: 

When overweight treadmill salesman Reginald Baskin finally meets a co-worker who doesn’t make fun of him, it’s just his own bad luck that tech guy Maurice turns out to be a two thousand-year-old vampire.

And when Maurice turns Reginald to save his life, it’s just Reginald’s own further bad luck that he wakes up to discover he’s become the slowest, weakest, most out-of-shape vampire ever born, doomed to “heal” to his corpulent self for all of eternity.

As Reginald struggles with the downsides of being a fat vampire — too slow to catch people to feed on, mocked by those he tries to glamour, assaulted by his intended prey and left for undead — he discovers in himself rare powers that few vampires have… and just in time too, because the Vampire Council might just want his head for being an inferior representative of their race.

Fat Vampire is the story of an unlikely hero who, after having an imperfect eternity shoved into his grease-stained hands, must learn to turn the afterlife’s lemons into tasty lemon danishes.

Reginald the Vampire sounds like a fun show, so we’ll be keeping an eye on it as it continues to move forward.