Even with the extreme success of AMC’s Interview With the Vampire series, which already has a third season lined up, many fans still look back at the film adaptation of Anne Rice’s 1976 novel with enough fondness to make it a cult classic. Starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in probably their most atypical roles to date, the film was a massive success, and turns thirty this year with much praise still heaped on it, both for its stars performances and for introducing fans to the work of one of the most prolific authors of all time.
In a new interview with Todd Gilchrist for Variety, director Neil Jordan reflected on the success of the film thirty years later, as well as the involvement of two megastars who, despite immense praise for their performances, never returned to the characters that are now cornerstones in their career. There are plenty of novels in The Vampire Chronicles that could have been adapted, but according to Jordan, the reason an adaptation of The Vampire Lestat, the second book in the series, never appeared is quite simple: Tom Cruise isn’t a sequel man. Or, at least, he wasn’t at the time.
“I was asked to write a script of “The Vampire Lestat,” which I did,” Jordan told Variety. “And quite simply, Tom didn’t want to reprise the role. It was as simple as that. And it would’ve been quite a different animal. If Mr. Cruise had said he would do it, I’m sure they would’ve done it. But at the time he wasn’t doing sequels.”
Cruise not returning for a sequel stalled out any progress Warner Bros. might have made on franchising the vamps and their deadly, darling charge Claudia, played by a young Kirsten Dunst. Of course, the studio managed to keep the rights to Rice’s Vampire Chronicles by producing Queen of the Damned in 2001, just before they would’ve reverted back to the author.
Notoriously despised by fans (and even Rice herself), the film recast Stuart Townsend as Lestat, and featured Marguerite Moreau as a junior Talamasca member seeking to discover the truth about the vampire’s musical career, with Lena Olin and Paul McGann in minor roles, as well as the late pop star Aaliyah as Akasha, queen of all vampires. The film’s lack of success — probably because of that weird Korn soundtrack, to be honest — left the franchise stagnating, and no further adaptations of Rice’s work appeared until AMC released their own spin on the original novel in 2022.
The original Interview With the Vampire film is available to rent on your digital platform of choice, and fans can read Gilchrist’s entire interview with Jordan on Variety’s website.
