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As Long as Lestat Doesn't Sparkle: Tale of the Body Thief Inching Towards Production

By Steven Lloyd Wilson | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (9)

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There are only five novels in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, regardless of what Wikipedia or your own book shelf is telling you. The series started with the decent Interview with the Vampire of course, at which point Anne Rice realized that her main character was a really whiny proto-Edward and decided that the protagonist would from thenceforth be the far more interesting Lestat. This led to the fantastic two-parter of The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned, hit a snag with the less than stellar Tale of the Body Thief, and then finished off with the magnificent mind fuck of Memnoch the Devil.

I reiterate this only to emphasize how strange Hollywood’s approach has been to the films. Interview was if anything better than the novel, while Queen of the Damned managed to destroy everything good about not one, but the next two books in the series. If they’d made Stuart Townsend sparkle, it wouldn’t have made it much worse. And yet in an age when series get rebooted every six years, instead of getting a decent version of The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned, we’re getting Tale of the Body Thief adapted into film.

The good news is that the duo of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are producing. The bad news is that it’s Tale of the Body Thief.

Look, the book isn’t terrible, it’s just the weakest of the bunch and seems an odd one to bother adapting into a film. It does have the wonderful hook of Lestat’s contention that no human in the world would turn down the offer to become a vampire, and yet no vampire would turn down becoming human again, but it lacks the narrative strength of the previous two Lestat novels, and the philosophical gut punch of the next one.

But hey, quality is quality, and maybe this time they’ll get it right. And maybe if we’re really good, it means that we’ll get a proper adaptation of Memnoch the Devil in a few years.









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Comments

I still have f*cking nightmares about the travesty that was Queen of the Damned, everyone involved in that was bloody awful with Stuart (I can't act) Townsend deserving special "praise".

I'm in complete agreement with your sentiments and Memnoch was a great book.

Posted by: Dark Avenger at February 8, 2012 10:15 AM

Queen of the Damned did manage to give us a decent soundtrack.

Posted by: ComfortableMadness at February 8, 2012 10:40 AM

I always liked Louis more than Lestat.

And I recall liking The Tale of the Body Thief, though it's been a long time since I read it. It had an actual story, as opposed to most of the other books, which were just "This happened to me. And then that happened to me."

Posted by: Todd at February 8, 2012 10:55 AM

I think they should just reboot the whole franchise.

Posted by: Laura at February 8, 2012 11:22 AM

I got the order of the books wrong when I first started reading them, and read The Vampire Lestat first. Everything else sucked after that.

Posted by: Captain Tuttle at February 8, 2012 11:41 AM

I agree that this is a strange one to adapt. I don't know why the best book of the five, The Vampire Lestat, is being completely ignored. It has the most pathos, hilarity, sweeping historical epicness - it's crying out to be made into a movie! If it were done right, it would be completely radass.

Posted by: noodlestein at February 8, 2012 12:16 PM

Oh, this actually has me kind of excited. I remember back when I was 13-15ish and would debate my ideal cast for adaptations of the books on message boards (and yes, now, at 28 I still have no life). The Vampire Lestat is the strongest of the books, but teenage me totally enjoyed Tale of the Body Thief as well, and I think it's probably the easiest one to adapt for a feature length movie.

Posted by: Angeleno Ewok at February 8, 2012 1:04 PM

Laura - in this case it'd be a re-bite!

Posted by: Bert at February 8, 2012 2:49 PM

I recall this book having one of the more action-driven plots of the bunch. I think it would translate well into a movie.

Of course, Queen of the Damned had the same potential.

I still don't understand Aliya's accent. It was like a Jamaican robot with a speech impediment. Probably caused by the apparent spine injury that made her walk that way.

Posted by: MyySharona at February 8, 2012 3:40 PM