Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles: The Vampire Lestat has at long last gained an official, film adaptation, as a miniseries within the span of Interview with the Vampire: Season 3 (and perhaps such will bleed into a possible Season 4).
For the immediate future, actor Sam Reid's Lestat de Lioncourt will make a prime impression prancing about on stage. That works for me. In Rice's sequel, Lestat is a top-tier rock star, which once made me think that David Bowie, Billy Idol or Sting would have been ideal for such casting. (Maybe somewhere in the realms of alternate reality, they've each filled that bill.)
Be that as it may, The Vampire Lestat was always bloody ripe for the big screen, but for whatever misguided reason, the novel was bypassed for Michael Rymer's Queen of the Damned, which was all well and good, as it held occasional nods to the second novel, except that Lestat would have made an obvious, sure-fire hit (with or without Tom Cruise reprising his role from Neil Jordan's 1994 hit); so why, oh, why was the opportunity missed?
Do the hows and whys matter anymore? It's a new day, a new age, and the alterations that flavored AMC's Interview redux ensure that the Lestat adaptation won't adhere to the book. Well, it's got to do so to some degree, but with AMC's Interview dismissing Louis de Point du Lac's consistent, guilt-ridden angst, the Rice brand (at least for this television revision) is derailed. This Lestat can't (and won't) be her Lestat.
The Interview series has given me much to ruminate. Some of it I've liked; some of it has unhinged me. Either way, I was always there to view and analyze the tweaked narrative. Why would Season 3 be any different? Then again, series these days do tend to surprise. In other words, one never knows until one gives the content a try.
The Vampire Lestat springs from its interpretive casket June 7.
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