HBO still wants to do bad, bad things with Sookie Stackhouse, and it’s banking on you being interested in watching.
Variety reports that HBO’s greenlit a reboot of True Blood, its trashy supernatural soap opera based on Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels. Riverdale creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and NOS4A2 showrunner Jami O’Brien will run and write the series along with Alan Ball (who previously worked on True Blood and Six Feet Under for the network), who will serve as an executive producer.
[referenced id=”1138404″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2018/11/benedict-cumberbatch-could-have-been-true-bloods-vampire-bill/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20/apbsbxmp5wlfvmoskgit.jpg” title=”Benedict Cumberbatch Could Have Been True Blood’s Vampire Bill” excerpt=”The year was 2008. Barack Obama was in the last leg of his ultimately successful bid for the U.S. presidency and the wildest thing on television aside from election coverage was a quirky little show on HBO called True Blood. The campy vampire soap opera quickly gained a reputation for…”]
Because the original True Blood’s final episode premiered only six years ago, a full-on retelling of that story would be an odd direction for HBO to go in, especially considering there’s so much more to Harris’ books that the first adaptation never got around to exploring. We already know that HBO and the team attached to the new True Blood can do tawdy, sexy dramas involving monsters and mystery. Now we need to see if they can manage to breathe new life into a dearly departed series no one exactly asked for because we haven’t begun to miss it quite yet.
Oddly enough, Aguirre-Sacasa was recently working on another vampire project, the Bram Stoker’s Dracula-inspired The Brides for ABC. The network ultimately passed but it was meant to star Gina Torres, so here’s hoping the creator makes the smart move and brings her along for the ride. O’Brien’s series NOS4A2, which also involved vampires, came to an end after its second season earlier this year on AMC.
Currently, none of the cast of HBO’s original series has been announced as being part of the project, and the network hasn’t released any proper details about just what shape the reboot’s actually going to take. We’ll bring you more as we know it.
[referenced id=”1154354″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/03/10-iconic-tv-vampires-from-angel-to-the-x-files/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/28/spaq0xs0q82exshmj7dc.jpg” title=”10 Iconic TV Vampires, From Angel To The X-Files” excerpt=”We are very excited to see awkward TV and vampires, a pairing that has yielded some of pop culture’s most memorable bloodsuckers. From a huge field of undead contenders, here are our 10 favourites.”]