HBO reportedly is developing a reboot of its hit horror series “True Blood.”
According to “The Hollywood Reporter,” “Riverdale” creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is behind the new series, but original series creator Alan Ball is on board as a producer.
The original series, based on the novels by Charlaine Harris, ran from 2008 to 2014, and starred Academy Award-winner Anna Paquin as telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse.
Sookie became the lover of vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), crossed paths with two threatening, pissy vamps, Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) and Pam (the glorious Kristin Bauer van Straten), and faced off against all manner of threats, ranging from shapeshifters to witches to all-too-human religious fanatics.
The show was gory and sexual, and, especially in its early seasons, scary as hell.
Vampires were second-class citizens who were struggling for equal rights as they “came out of the coffin” to mainstream society. The allegory to the LGBTQ civil rights movement was, at the time, groundbreaking.
Today, it’s one part of the show that hasn’t aged that well, as it implies LGBTQs are scary deviants.
Ball and Aguirre-Sacasa are both gay, and it would be fascinating to see if a reboot would openly embrace Eric’s bisexuality, for example, and finally allow him to pursue Sookie’s hunky but dim-witted brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten in the original). That was teased several times and now plays like gay-baiting. Jason, if he were being authentically updated, would probably be pansexual.
All these years later, and I’m still mad about how the show did Tara (Rutina Wesley) dirty. She deserved so much better.
And who could possibly play Lafayette, the sassy chef so brilliantly captured by Nelsan Ellis? Ellis died tragically in 2017 from complications of alcohol withdrawal syndrome.
Any reboot will have a lot to live up to.
Don’t believe me? Check out this iconic moment from the series. You don’t want to mess with Lafayette when the earrings come off.