Big news for fans of Lestat and the rest of Anne Rice‘s ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ as Universal and Imagine Entertainment have just picked up the rights for the entire series! The way the deal has been worded, they have the rights to both existing and future novels in the series. This also includes the screenplay that Christopher Rice, Anne’s son, wrote for ‘Tale of the Body Thief’ which Imagine had optioned two years ago.

Now the iffy news, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci will produce the films. This is a bit surprising as the two recently were reported to have stopped working together and Kurtzman is knee deep in the re-imaging of the classic Universal Monsters movies.

While I personally have enjoyed much of what Orci and Kurtzman has had up their sleeves, some may be hesitant to hear of his involvement. Their movies aren’t for everyone and are often thought to lack in substance which is exactly what Rice’s work needs in order to be successful on the big screen. Aside from just these two on board as producers, we’ll see Erica Huggins on the film and overseeing the films for Imagine Enterainment’s side and Bobby Cohen to executive produce.

The books in ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ series include: ‘Interview with the Vampire’, ‘The Vampire Lestat’, ‘The Queen of the Damned’, ‘The Tale of the Body Thief’, ‘Memnoch the Devil’, ‘The Vampire Armand’, ‘Merrick’, ‘Blood and Gold’, ‘Blackwood Farm’, ‘Blood Canticle’, and the upcoming ‘Prince Lestat’. I keep seeing the number 13 bandied about with these films so one could easily assume that it also features the two novels in the ‘New Tales of the Vampires’ which include ‘Pandora’ and ‘Vittorio the Vampire’.

This is a huge win for Rice and fans of her work as long as they are able to properly bring the works to life on the big screen. While many have fond memories of the original ‘Interview with the Vampire,’ they also most likely have quite distasteful memories of ‘Queen of the Damned.’ With massive ongoing works becoming the norm in Hollywood, I imagine they would be able to score some good actors willing to sign long term contracts if this was pitched right. At least I like to hope so.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter