Anyone bummed that Paramount has put a hold on the sequel to World War Z might take some undead solace in the news that producer/director Shawn Levy and 20th Century Fox have acquired the rights to the forthcoming novel, A People's History Of The Vampire Uprising.
Written by Raymond A. Villareal, and intended to be the first of four volumes, the book will take its cue from World War Z as its to be told in an oral history format. Notes Deadline, it deals with the "appearance, assimilation and ultimately epic and violent confrontation of vampires with the human race." The story will be told from a number of perspectives, most notably the CDC investigator who is the first person to realize that there is a new virus starting to spread, the first FBI agent assigned to the Gloaming [the name for the vampires] Crimes Unit, a librarian working in the Vatican, gossip website TMZ (!) and a civil rights attorney.
A People's History Of The Vampire Uprising is one of a variety of vampire projects that are on the horizon on both the big screen and the small, among them TV pilots for The Passage and Let The Right One In, and Anne Rice's intention of turning her Vampire Chronicles into a television series.
Insofar as World War Z is concerned, Paramount and star Brad Pitt have put the sequel on hold as they wait for the schedule of director David Fincher to free up. Previously Fincher had directed Pitt in Fight Club. The first World War Z grossed $540 million worldwide.
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