Yahoo News Julie Plec reveals how Vampire Academy is like a timely Hunger Games
When Julie Plec set out to adapt Richelle Mead's best-selling YA book series Vampire Academy into a TV show, she had no idea just how timely and relatable the story about two best friends set in the world of royal vampires would actually be.
"Funnily enough, the books, I first read them in 2007/2008 when they started coming out, and what I read into them at that moment was this beautiful story about a true, lifelong female friendship and the power of these two women as they made their way from adolescence into adulthood in a very rarefied society," Plec said during EW's Game Changers panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday. "When I was given the opportunity to make the show in 2021, I pitched it as Bridgerton with vampires. Let's make it. Everyone was like, 'Woo! Yeah! Bridgerton with vampires, we are in.'"
Jose Haro/Peacock 'Vampire Academy'
But when Plec and showrunner Marguerite MacIntyre began developing the new Peacock series, they realized they weren't making Bridgerton with vampires after all. "We opened our writers room, and we re-read the books and we were like, 'This society is really unbalanced, it's really on edge,'" Plec says. "There's a class bias, there's an elitism built into it, and we started seeing, because of where we were in our moment in time, all the threads the novelist laid in there. She had built a story about an imbalanced society ready to implode and it feels like right now, we're collectively living that experience, that feeling of an economic disparity or a cultural disparity — everything feels like we're in a pressure cooker."
That realization opened up an entirely new direction for Plec to take the series that she hopes will connect with viewers in an even deeper, more meaningful way.
Peacock 'Vampire Academy'
"The show centered around these two women and this really beautiful friendship is actually the origin story of true revolutionaries who, once they realize the society they exist in is not built for them, they're going to work together to dismantle it," Plec says. "So I called the network and I'm like, 'Yeah, Bridgerton, great pitch, but um ... I think we're making The Hunger Games now. It felt great to realize we're not just telling a story that will appeal to fans of the genre or people who like to look at sexy vampires and pretty pictures of castles and ball gowns and stuff. We're telling a story about speaking truth to power and standing up against the systemic, it's not totally a patriarchy but it may as well be, and trying to be the change and act to make the change the world needs. It's super entertaining but it's got a message."
Vampire Academy stars Sisi Stringer as Rose Hathaway, Daniela Nieves as Lissa Dragomir, Kieron Moore as Dimitri Belikov, and André Dae Kim as Christian Ozera. The series is set in a world of privilege and glamour, where two young women's friendship transcends their strikingly different classes as they prepare to complete their education and enter vampire society. Lissa is a powerful Royal Moroi vampire, and Rose is a half-vampire Dhampir training to become a Guardian so she can protect her against the savage "Strigoi" vampires who threaten to tear their society apart — that is, if Royal infighting doesn't do the job first. And while they think they have their future all figured out, a tragic event soon changes the course of both of their lives in ways they never expected.
Vampire Academy premieres Sept. 15 on Peacock.
— Additional reporting by Maureen Lee Lenker
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
Related content:
