Today during AMC’s Vampire Lestate Hall H session at San Diego Comic-Con, it was announced that the Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire anthology is getting a fourth season, Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned. Hall H erupted after the teaser above was dropped.
The renewal closely follows Sunday’s finale of season three’s The Vampire Lestat, which teased the return of Queen of the Damned protagonist, Akasha.
Queen of the Damned is the third novel in Rice’s Vampire Chronicles following Interview With the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat.
Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned will be executive produced and showrun by Hannah Moscovitch, along with executive producers Mark Johnson and Rolin Jones. The trio were on today’s Lestat Hall H panel along with series stars Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian and Sheila Atim.
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Moscovitch was a writer on the first two seasons of Interview with the Vampire and an executive producer on The Vampire Lestat, for which she specifically wrote the “Akasha” and “Gabriella” characters. Her previous credits include the critically acclaimed play Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, for which she received the 2021 Governor General’s Award for English-language drama, and the Crave TV mini-series Little Bird.
“In The Vampire Lestat, Mark, Rolin, Hannah and this extraordinary cast delivered an unforgettable season filled with propulsive storytelling that captivated the passionate and engaged fans of this franchise,” said Dan McDermott, Chief Content Officer of AMC Global Media and President of AMC Studios. “We can’t wait to continue the journey with Queen of the Damned, one of the most iconic stories in Anne Rice’s mythology, and watch our established and beloved characters confront Akasha with their world, and ours, very much hanging in the balance.”
Following the feature success of the Tom Cruise-Brad Pitt combo The Interview of the Vampire in 1994 which grossed over $223M, Warner Bros tried to make Queen of the Damned in 2002 with Aaliyah as Akasha and Stuart Townsend stepping in as Lestat for Cruise. The picture didn’t work grossing only $45M. Vampire Lestat the TV series is one of the highest rated of the year on Rotten Tomatoes.
At today’s panel, Johnson spoke about the penultimate episode which saw Armand and Daniel Molly behead Louis and Lestat during a violent confrontation at the park.
Johnson, “said, “Who takes a pen over an episode and decapitates the two leads. It’s unheard of. And yet, I would love to say I saw this all coming.”
Anderson quipped about his severed head performance as Louis, “It’s not the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life of acting. What happened? How do you speak? How do you breathe?…it wasn’t like some hokum science.”
Queen of the Damned is also EP’ed by the late Rice.