Peacock provides a hopeful second chance for Vampire Academy

Peacock’s new Vampire Academy series, based on the book series of the same name, has better legs to stand on than the 2014 film did. This is especially with Vampire Diaries alums Julie Plec and Marguerite MacIntyre at the helm. 

If you know anything about me, you’ll know that one of my all time favorite movies is Vampire Academy (2014). Boasting a whopping 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and a hilariously low box office sum, it’s pretty well regarded as a bad movie. But, I love it.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim to think it’s an incredible work of cinema, but rather, I love it because it’s so horrendously bad. The cheesy dialogue, clumsy world building, and inconsistent pacing were the final nails in this film’s coffin, but, if in the right mood, it’s a masterclass of trashy teen vampire camp.

On paper, everything about that film should’ve worked. It boasted a surprisingly stacked cast, with names like Zoey Deutch, Claire Foy, and Sarah Hyland on the bill, and even indie darling Anya Taylor-Joy as an unnamed ‘feeder girl’ character. The Vampire Academy book series was also a New York Times best seller, and was clearly well loved by those who read it, as the first book alone sits at an average rating of 4.11 on Goodreads.

Coming only two years after the end of The Twilight Saga, with Breaking Dawn – Part 2 releasing in 2012, Vampire Academy was clearly trying to be the next big vampire franchise. It had all the makings of one too: Unique lore, a major cliffhanger, and five more books to pull from after the first.

But, as it tends to go, Twilight simultaneously caused vampire craze and quickly after, vampire fatigue, leaving Vampire Academy to flop hard, making only $15.6 million back of their $30 million budget in its entire theatrical run. Vampire Academy felt three years too late in the same way the Maze Runner series missed their window in the teen dystopian drama hype, leaving this film to remain an odd entry into our history of vampire media.

Though, since Vampire Academy’s ill-fated attempt at success in 2014, Twilight has come back into the popular culture, with each of the films in the saga trending on Netflix the day they were added back onto the platform. This Twilight renaissance feels like it’s opened the floodgates of YA vampire media once again, and there’s a number of upcoming vampire shows and movies to prove it.

One in particular is Night Teeth, a Netflix vampire film about a college student who ends up accidentally chauffeuring a group of female vampires; it actually stars Lucy Fry, the original Vasilisa Dragomir from the Vampire Academy film, along with other stars like Megan Fox and Sydney Sweeney. Netflix also has First Kill in development from producer Emma Roberts; a series about a romance between a vampire and a vampire hunter based on the story by V.E. Schwab.

With all the vampire content Netflix continues to churn out, it’s no surprise Peacock wanted in on the action, and ordered 10 episodes of a new adaptation of the Vampire Academy book series by Richelle Mead.

This show will be led by co-showrunners Julie Plec, the mind behind The Vampire Diaries universe, and Marguerite MacIntyre, Vampire Diaries alum and producer on The Originals, and I think it stands a much better chance at success than the film adaptation did.

This is why it has a better chance.

For starters, there’s a lot of lore within the Vampire Academy book series, and the film had a hard time juggling all of that information while telling an interesting story. In fact, the main criticism of the film is that it’s ‘Exposition: The Movie,’ with Zoey Deutch’s Rose Hathaway constantly jumping in with voice-over narration to keep the audience in the loop.

Rose is a half-vampire guardian, called a Dhampir, and her life’s mission is to protect the Moroi. Princess Vasilisa Dragomir, simply called Lissa, is a Moroi, or a mortal vampire. I can never remember these names, and the film doesn’t trust the audience to remember them either, so they actually flash them on the screen as Rose is explaining the complicated dynamics of these two groups in the beginning of the film. The third faction in the series is called Strigoi, which is a group of vampires that have either purposefully killed a human while feeding or have been forced to drink Strigoi blood, and they then basically become unfeeling, immortal killers.

As I mentioned, the film struggled to actually relay all of this information without distracting from the main plot, and it made it feel bogged down with info dumps rather than an introduction to an interesting world.

The show has an advantage in this department, considering the 10 episodes they will have to tell, assumedly, the single story of the first novel. They will have the time to allow the audience to watch each group on screen and gain understanding of them from their behavior rather than whatever Rose decides to tell us. They can ease the audience into the complicated lore and world of the series rather than relying on lazy voice-over to get the job done.

The film also took itself entirely too seriously for a movie that starts off with Lissa’s entire family dying in a car crash while “Bad Girls” by M.I.A. plays in the background. With classic lines like: “…you all acted like I put a porcupine in a hot tub,” delivered with complete sincerity, the audience is more inclined to laugh at the film rather than laugh with it. Despite that very reason being exactly why I love it, the cheesy dialogue and goofy inter-character dynamics didn’t do it any favors in its quest to become a successful vampire franchise.

The series has a few options when creating this world: Lean into the campy nature of the original film, or take it down a darker path, and both of these options feel safe in the hands of Plec and McIntyre. The Vampire Diaries universe, love it or hate it, does drama well, and Legacies in particular has leaned into the campy elements of their show over the years. Whether the epic betrayal of Victor Dashkov will be over-the-top camp like the film or played for drama, the series has more time to build into major betrayals and plot points than the film ever had, and will hopefully spend that time wisely.

The series also just announced its main cast, which features an interesting assortment of actors, as well as their character descriptions.

Mortal Kombat’s Sisi Stringer will play Rose Hathaway, whose description as a fiery rule-breaker sounds very similar to her film counterpart. Lissa will be portrayed by Daniela Nieves, and the royal yet unlucky Moroi also sounds very familiar.

Kieron Moore will play Dimitri Belikov, Dhampir guardian to the royal Moroi family. In both the book series and the film, Dimitri is 24, while his love interest Rose is 17, and this problematic age difference has been debated online for years. It’s unclear whether or not Dimitri will be aged down, Rose aged up, or if the relationship will be left with a seven-year age gap, but I can’t imagine them being the main couple with an age gap like that today.

In the film, their age difference is constantly brought up, and though they end the movie as just friends, it’s clear that, had the franchise been able to continue, they would’ve become much more. After so many years of teen shows doing relationships between adults and underaged teens and getting ripped apart for it, I hope this series is smart enough to take care of this problem before it can start.

More about the cast

Additionally, brooding Moroi bad-boy and Lissa’s other half, Christian Ozera, will be played by Andre Dae Kim. J. August Richards will play Moroi noble Victor Dashkov, and Anita-Joy Uwajeh will play original character Tatiana Vogel, a Moroi who takes the royal court by storm with her pension for justice.

Mia McKenna-Bruce is set to play Mia Karp, an original Moroi mean girl determined to climb the social ladder, but whose feelings for Meredith, a Dhampier played by Rihan Blundell, get in the way of that plan.

Jonetta Kaiser was cast as Sonya Karp, who is described as a bookish outcast with a profound power. Fans of both the book series and the film know this character well, and after Claire Foy’s time with the darker side of the character was cut short, I’m sure fans have a lot to look forward to with Kaiser’s interpretation.

Finally, Andrew Liner will play Mason Ashford, in a similar fashion to the one portrayed by Cameron Monaghan, as Rose’s “friend-zoned” competitor in the race to become the best guardian at St. Vladimir’s Academy.

Despite the wonderful fact that this cast is infinitely more diverse than the film version was, it also sounds like the series is committed to honoring the source material while expanding the universe at the same time. New versions of characters they know and love as well as brand new ones will surely please fans of the book series. The story will unfold over 10 hour-long episodes and will allow a lower barrier of entry than the film ever did for new fans as well.

Even though I like the film and it’s almost universally regarded as a bad movie, this series serves as a second chance for fans of the book series to get an adaptation that does it justice.