Vampires and reboots: two things you can count on clawing their way up from the dirt when you least expect it. It’s been just six years—the blink of an eye for an immortal—since True Blood ended in an explosion of sentiment and heteronormativity, but TV Line reports that HBO is in talks to develop a reboot. Yes, already.
Series creator (and showrunner for five of the seven seasons) Alan Ball will return as executive producer, but this new version would bring Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Jami O’Brien on board as writers and executive producers. There’s something deeply appropriate in having Aguirre-Sacasa, the man behind Riverdale, picking up the True Blood mantle: Like Riverdale, True Blood was one of those shows in which every secondary character is more interesting than the ostensible lead(s). Sookie Stackhouse may have been the center around which the story rotated, but her friends, neighbors, and nemeses (Tara! Lafayette! Pam! Maryann!) provided the zing.
Jami O’Brien was the showrunner on the adaptation of Joe Hill’s NOS4A2 and worked on Fear the Walking Dead, so she certainly has the genre background for a soapy vampire tale. (O’Brien and Aguirre-Sacasa also worked together on Big Love.)
Interestingly, this is being discussed specifically as a True Blood reboot, not a new adaptation of Charlaine Harris’s novels. And while it might feel awfully soon for HBO to be heading back to Bon Temps, this kind of over-the-top supernatural drama is exactly what I want on TV right now. Bring back werepanthers and shapeshifters! Find me the next-gen Joe Manganiello and have him growl “Packmaster” every two minutes! Give me some villains I can hate as much as I hated Russell Edgington and that annoying preacher!
Vampires are immortal, and so is melodrama. Bring it.
