Three years ago, author Anne Rice regained the film rights to the books in her series The Vampire Chronicles, and with those rights in hand she began dreaming of bringing her stories to the screen through "a television series of the highest quality". A year later, Paramount Television and Anonymous Content picked up the TV series project, with Rice's son Christopher attached to write and executive produce. American Horror Story's Bryan Fuller was briefly involved with the project, intending to serve as showrunner, but walked away. Last year, the Vampire Chronicles series found a home at the Hulu streaming service.
Now another year has passed, and The Vampire Chronicles is starting over from scratch. Variety has learned that the series is no longer in the works at Hulu, and that Paramount Television and Anonymous Content also aren't involved with it anymore, as their option on the rights expired.
Rice and her associates are shopping The Vampire Chronicles around to new buyers, as a package deal with another Rice property, The Mayfair Witches. The Mayfair Witches is set up at Warner Bros., but anyone who wants to get in on the Vampire/Witches action is expected to fork over $2.5 million to take the Mayfair rights off WB's hands, in addition to the $30 – $40 million being asked for the package deal.
The Vampire Chronicles series follows vampire Lestat de Lioncourt who serves as hero, antihero, and narrator. The Mayfair Witches is about a family of witches, and began in 1990 with the novel The Witching Hour.
There are apparently four bidders already pursuing the Vampire/Witches deal – including Paramount.
Anne Rice, Christopher Rice, and author Eric Shaw Quinn, who is also attached to work on the Vampire and Witches projects, posted the following message on Facebook earlier this month:
To all the wonderful, loyal and steadfast supporters of this page and of this show. We realize it’s been some time since we’ve given you an update. Please allow me to assure you that magnificently exciting things are happening behind the scenes and we are dyyyyyyyyyying to talk to you about them. But in this particular moment, we are sworn to secrecy. The minute, and I assure you, the MINUTE, we are free to discuss the latest developments, many of them the most exciting since we began work on this, we will do so, and we will do so here. This page is not dead. Like Lestat, this project will live forever. We know you thirst, and we, Lestat and all the others who share the dark gift shall satisfy that thirst very soon.
I haven't read all of the novels in the Vampire Chronicles series, but I have read a good number of them, and see great promise in a TV show that would, as Rice said, faithfully present Lestat's story "as it is told in the books, complete with the many situations that readers expect to see." I would love to see the vision on the pages of those books brought directly to the screen.