What Interview With The Vampire Season 3 Can Learn From 2002's Failed Anne Rice Adaptation

Summary Season 3 of Interview with the Vampire is adapting The Vampire Lestat, potentially avoiding Queen of the Damned's pitfalls.

Sam Reid's well-received portrayal of Lestat will continue in season 3, promising to maintain exceptional writing and story focus.

Season 3 is likely to avoid the mistake of overextending the plot, with a teaser hinting at an exciting music documentary twist.

Interview with the Vampire has been confirmed for a third season on AMC after two highly successful seasons spent adapting the original novel of the same name. As revealed in the trailer dropped at San Diego Comic-Con, Interview with the Vampire season 3 adapts The Vampire Lestat, the second book in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles. The original novel centers around Lestat awakening in the modern world and becoming a rock star, while revealing the titular vampire's past from his own perspective.

This isn't the first time The Vampire Lestat has been adapted. The 2002 film Queen of the Damned, a follow-up to 1994's adaptation of Interview, combined elements from the second and third books in the series. The film features Aaliyah as vampire queen Akasha and Stuart Townsend taking over the role of Lestat. Aaliyah's performance is the highlight of Queen of the Damned, with the movie ultimately being panned by critics. While Interview already has a leg-up over this failed adaptation, there's still plenty that the new season could learn when adapting the same material.

Related We Haven't Met The Real Lestat In Interview With The Vampire – We Won't In Season 3 Either Season 3 of Interview With The Vampire will allow Lestat to tell his own story, but viewers should be wary of trusting his perspective.

What Went Wrong With Queen Of The Damned In 2002

Some Things Stood Out

Close

There were a number of things that Queen of the Damned did wrong that ultimately caused the film to fall short. Recasting Lestat de Lioncourt with Townsend proved a poor choice, as while the actor did an admirable job in the role with the material given, he didn't live up to the charisma of Tom Cruise's performance as the character from eight years before. Cruise had supposedly been approached to reprise the role, but ultimately turned it down.

The script was fairly weak, with some of the performances wooden and bland; something even the best actors struggle to make work. Worse, the film tried to do too much with too little room.

Queen of the Damned had a number of things going for it, with a soundtrack filled with music from some of the decade's biggest names in nu metal and rock, but it boasted more than a few fatal flaws. The script was fairly weak, with some of the performances wooden and bland; something even the best actors struggle to make work. Worse, the film struggled to condense its story into a single feature. Adapting a novel into a movie is already a struggle, and trying to fit the plot of two separate novels into a single film was destined to fail.

How Interview With The Vampire Season 3 Can Avoid Queen Of The Damned's Problems

It's Already Set Itself Up For Success

Interview with the Vampire's third season is already poised to easily avoid these pitfalls. Coming off of Interview's well-reviewed second season, it's likely the writing will continue to be exceptional going into season 3. Sam Reid's take on the character Lestat is so well-received that it's difficult to imagine him being recast, and it's already been confirmed he'll be reprising the role. While the writing might surprise everyone by not matching the weight of the first two seasons, it seems unlikely, and the biggest potential pitfall is likely to be trying to do too much.

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Even with modern prestige TV series having such small episode counts compared to even just a decade ago, Interview has far more room to work with and likely won't try to work in the plot of other novels just yet. While season 2 dipped into some of the elements from other novels in the series, showing us more of Armand's backstory, it did so sparingly and kept it relevant to the plot. With a teaser already released season 3 looks to be an exciting adaptation, with Lestat telling his story in Interview with the Vampire via a music documentary, adding a fun twist.