AMC Buys Rights to 18 Anne Rice Novels
It sounds like a new cinematic (or at least televisual) universe is brewing: One dedicated to the literary works of Anne Rice, the author behind The Vampire Chronicles and many more supernatural novels. In a press release, AMC announced it had purchased the rights to a whopping 18 Rice novels from the Vampire Chronicles and The Lives of the Mayfair Witches series, with the intent to generate a whole bunch of new content for its networks and streaming services.
AMC has also hired Friday Night Lights and Weeds writer and producer Rolin Jones to develop projects based on the Rice material. Here is the list of Rice titles involved in the deal:
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.
Rice herself said of the news “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. That dream is now a reality, and the result is one of the most significant and thrilling deals of my long career.”
AMC has obviously had enormous success in recent years with its multifaceted Walking Dead franchise, which was based on a long-running Image comic book. Now they get to continue serving that audience with shows (and possibly movies) about vampires and witches. If they get a Frankenstein’s Monster show on the books next they pull off a hyper-rare Supernatural Monster TV Bingo.
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