Danny McBride has had a lot of fingers pointed at him recently thanks to some accusing the Eastbound & Down star of killing off beloved franchises like Halloween and The Exorcist. The creator of The Righteous Gemstones isn’t backing down, though, and is stepping back into the world of horror by adapting Grady Hendrix’s hit novel The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.
Per Deadline, McBride and his Righteous Gemstones partner, Edi Patterson, will work alongside Hendrix to bring the 2020 New York Times bestselling novel to life as a horror-comedy series for HBO. The project was previously in development at Amazon, but landed at its new home after a series of lengthy delays due to COVID and the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes of last year. Described as “Steel Magnolias meets Dracula,” The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires follows Charleston, South Carolina homebody Patricia Campbell, and the members of her book club, as they uncover the mystery behind a string of murders caused by a handsome vampire. Check out the book’s synopsis below.
“Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime. At these meetings they’re as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are about their own families.
“One evening after book club, Patricia is viciously attacked by an elderly neighbor, bringing the neighbor’s handsome nephew, James Harris, into her life. James is well traveled and well read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn’t felt in years. But when children on the other side of town go missing, their deaths written off by local police, Patricia has reason to believe James Harris is more of a Bundy than a Brad Pitt. The real problem? James is a monster of a different kind—and Patricia has already invited him in.”
Grady Hendrix’s Work Isn’t Easy To Adapt
First published on April 7, 2020, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is Hendrix’s sixth full-length novel, and features the author’s trademark wit and humor, which blends seamlessly with horror elements to create effective social commentary. Dealing with themes of autonomy and class stereotypes, the novel follows in the footsteps of his previous offerings, Horrorstör, and My Best Friend’s Exorcism.
However, like many horror authors before him, including Stephen King, Hendrix creates intricate characters and plots using a unique voice that’s sometimes hard to translate to the screen. Case in point: My Best Friend’s Exorcism. While it was a great book filled with both humor and horror, it didn’t necessarily work well as a feature film when it was released in 2022 on Prime Video. With an audience score of just 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie felt like it was trying too hard to bring Hendrix’s themes to life, choosing to focus instead on making sure we knew it was set in the 1980s.
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With The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires set in the late ’80s to mid-’90s, here’s hoping the novel doesn’t suffer a similar fate at the hands of McBride and company, and that a series — rather than a feature film — will give the story a chance to breathe, and focus on character rather than setting. There’s no word yet on when the show might go into production, but we’ll have more news on the project, including casting, as it becomes available.