It’s been a few years since we’ve seen Anne Rice’s most famous bloodsucker, Lestat, on the big screen. But he could be about to make a comeback after Imagine Entertainment teamed up with producers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman to option Rice’s fourth Vampire Chronicles book, The Tale Of The Body Thief.

Lee Patterson, who came to Hollywood’s attention with his screenplay Snatched, has been hired to write the adaptation. Body Thief finds Lestat depressed and lonely. Looking for a little change, he agrees to transfer souls for a day with a human psychic who promptly does a runner with his body. Trapped in human form, the vampire must reach out to some friends to help him track the man down and reclaim his body. Suffice to say that, despite the premise, the focus will be on horror and drama, not wacky shenanigans. So don’t go expecting scenes of whoever plays Lestat running down a street screaming, “Give me my body back!” as he sees the thief about to enter an ice cream shop for a marathon dessert session.

Lestat, of course, was the romantic, dangerous bloodsucker long before the current crop of sparkly, moody types came along. He was played back in 1994’s Interview With The Vampire by Tom Cruise and resurrected by Stuart Townsend for the decidedly dodgier Queen Of The Damned in 2002.

Body Thief is at a very early stage, so there’s no word on who might play the lead this time around – assuming the script makes it through development at all.