The Big Picture
- HBO snags rights to a vampire series based on Grady Hendrix’s book, previously held by Amazon.
- Danny McBride and Edi Patterson to adapt
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires
for TV. - The story follows a book club fighting back against a handsome stranger who may be a vampire terrorizing their town.
As we prepare to bid adieu to FX’s award nominated vampire-centered comedy series, What We Do in the Shadows, following its upcoming sixth season, a new bloodsucker is rising from the grave over at HBO. Today, Deadline announced that it snagged the rights to for the book-to-series adaptation of Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. First, the network had to pry it from the hands of Amazon, who were previously set to add the title to their ever-growing lineup of books given the on-screen makeover. Now that it’s situated over in the land of dragons and Dune, the series will be reworked into television form by Hendrix and the dream comedic duo of Danny McBride and Edi Patterson.
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires follows a married woman and mother named Patricia Campbell whose only respite from living for her family is her weekly book club. There, alongside other women from the Charleston community, she can talk about all things true crime while also blowing off some steam about her loved ones at home and the mundane ins and outs of life. One night, on her way home from her beloved book club, Patricia becomes the victim of an attack carried out by an elderly neighbor. Through the assault, she meets the neighbor’s nephew, James Harris, who is everything her husband isn’t – handsome, smart, and worldly. Needless to say, Patricia catches feelings quickly but when children in the neighborhood begin to go missing, all signs point back to James who may be more of a monster than man as Patricia was initially led to believe.
Why Danny McBride and Edi Patterson Are The Perfect Team For The Job
While they may be at each other’s throats as a pair of disgruntled and spoiled children on HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, McBride and Patterson are just the team needed to handle the adaptation of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to slaying Vampires. Many know McBride for his comedic performances on Gemstones and other HBO comedies including Vice Principals and Eastbound & Down (all three of which he also created), but it may surprise some to know that the comedic actor also has an appreciation for the darker side. A frequent collaborator with filmmaker David Gordon Green, McBride worked as a co-writer and executive producer on all three of Green’s Halloween installments as well as The Exorcist: Believer.
Meanwhile, Patterson has been working alongside McBride for nearly a decade and has been a gargantuan name in comedy for much longer than that. Along with her appearance on The Righteous Gemstones, Patterson also joined McBride in Vice Principals, and has also recently been seen and heard in such titles as Resident Alien, The Last O.G., Harley Quinn, and Knuckles. The actress has also done plenty of writing on The Righteous Gemstones and holds credits as a scribe on Showtime’s sketch comedy series The Underground and Cartoon Network’s animated series We Bare Bears.
As of right now, no further information has been revealed but because both McBride and Patterson are known for bringing their friends along for the ride, we can’t wait to see what familiar faces make their way into The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.
