|
Fan Forum Hero
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 83,842
|
Oh yes!  And I agree with that, too. 
ETA: Found these:
Quote:
Twilight' meets Dawson's Creek' in CW's Vampire Diaries'
PASADENA, Calif. - Who would've thought that yesterday's Pet Rock, bell-bottom jeans and "Batman" parodies would turn into the undead? But if anything has snagged the spotlight these days it's the eternally stalking vampire. There's nothing as hot as that cold embrace.
From Nosferatu to "Twilight," vampires have always been good for a dramatic shiver. And television has been kind to the teeth that fed it from "The Night Stalker," to "Moonlight" to "True Blood," to the newest resurrection, "Vampire Diaries," premiering Sept. 10 on the CW.
This series is etched by writer Kevin Williamson (best known for his pace-setting "Dawson's Creek") and his sometime co-writer Julie Plec. Based on the books by L.J. Smith, "Vampire Diaries" not only owes its heritage to the vampire mythology, but goes back even further to the Cain and Able conflict.
Here you have the "good" vampire (Paul Wesley) and his older brother, the "bad" vampire (Ian Somerhalder).
"The premise is the same," says Williamson, "girl meets vampire ... When I read the first book, I was like, 'No way. This is "Twilight."' But when I got to the second book, you start to realize, 'Oh, my God, boy, this is a fork in the road. It really does separate.' So we're getting to that fork in the road really quick. And we're really sort of telling the story about a small town and all the sort of evil ... this darkness that sort of lies underneath this town and how this vampire comes to town and sort of stirs it all up."
At first Williamson was reluctant to follow the fad. But he and Plec had worked together on "Scream" and wanted to join forces again. "We were like, 'Well, OK, all right. We'll see what we can do.' And once we got into it, it's sort of a challenge. It's like, 'What can we do differently? What can we add to it?'" says Williamson.
The pilot was particularly difficult to write, he says. "Because it does have a lot of similarities to 'Twilight,' and there's no way around it.
"We had the story as he comes to town, the first day of school. That is the book. So we are telling it in sort of that fashion, but we're switching things around. Once we get into it and we can establish all the characters ... the pilot, we had 10 characters to get out in 42 minutes. It's tough. And so now we can sort of sit back and start telling stories on a weekly basis. Then it all changes. That's when you'll see the differences, because you're watching a weekly show. We're not a movie with a beginning, middle and end. We're actually evolving, and we get to evolve and just tell the stories, and it just sort of unrolls."
Wesley plays the good vampire, who has not fed on human blood for many years. He's the new kid at Mystic Falls High School, who may have fought in the Civil War, but has to be a teenager like the others. Wesley says he read dozens of other pilots before he happened on this one.
"A vampire who is born in the 1860s, and then has to mask himself as a high schooler - there was nothing like that. I was so, so obsessed with this character. I love this character so much," says Wesley.
"And what we love about the character is he may be 150 years old, but he's a teenager, and he still can't get it right," adds Williamson.
Nina Dobrev ("DeGrassi: The Next Generation") plays the small-town girl that both siblings lust after. "Stefan (Wesley) is the man who tries to reach out to her soul, and he cares about her, and he takes care of her," says Dobrev, "whereas Damon (Somerhalder) has that bad-boy quality, and every girl likes a bad boy, at the end of the day ... There is something about a man who lurks in the dark."
Plec agrees and says she owes her fascination with bad boys to the television of her youth. "Me in my head, if Jordan Catalano (the aloof teen of "My So-Called Life") was a vampire or Dylan McKay (of "Beverly Hills, 90210"), that naughty-bad boy that just ... You want to believe, like in reference to Jordan, you want to believe there is so much going on behind those eyes. You want to believe that they have epic amounts of knowledge and soul and spirituality and intelligence lurking behind those eyes. And in the real men, you often don't get that."
Bloodsuckers they may be, but vampires obey certain rules in the mythology. Williamson says he's skewed those a bit. "I know we can go out in the sun. Sunlight kills vampires but they have this talisman ring that they wear, with this blue lapis stone - this is from the book - that protects them. It has been spelled, so it is a special ring. They can wear it and go out into the sun. But if that ring comes off, they are in trouble."
"The rules of killing are pretty consistent across multiple mythologies," says Plec. "But the rest of the folklore doesn't really apply. We don't have silver, garlic, crucifixes. They can be seen in mirrors. All the basic, throughout time and fiction, rules of vampires (don't apply)."
source
|
NY Times reported this:
Quote:
Looking for Viewers. No Need to Pardon the Puns
IS America vampired out? The CW network hopes not.
CW begins an ambitious campaign this week to promote a new series for the 2009-10 TV season, “The Vampire Diaries.” The campaign includes offbeat elements intended to attract attention, which include a blood drive, giveaways of mock products like “fang floss” and online games.
“The Vampire Diaries,” scheduled to make its debut on CW stations on Sept. 10, is tailored to appeal to the network’s target audience: younger women who dote on its shows like “One Tree Hill” and “Supernatural” and were fans of series like “Dawson’s Creek” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which were from its predecessor, WB.
•
Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the promotions is the blood drive, sponsored with the American Red Cross. It is to take place on more than 230 high school and college campuses around the country, said Stephanie Millian, director for biomedical communications at the Red Cross in Washington.
Posters feature the three principal cast members of “The Vampire Diaries” — Paul Wesley, Nina Dobrev and Ian Somerhalder — sprawled languidly under this headline: “Starve a vampire. Donate blood.”
The Red Cross is working with CW “to produce a public service announcement that will feature members of the cast,” Ms. Millian said, and there will be commercials promoting the blood drive on the Channel One high school TV network owned by Alloy Inc.
The partnership is “an opportunity to engage the younger members of our communities,” she added, noting that Americans ages 16 to 22 represent “25 percent of our donors.”
“The Vampire Diaries” arrives as TV sets, movie theaters, Web sites and bookstores are awash in all things vampiric.
On television, there already are the HBO series “True Blood” and the BBC America series “Being Human.” The popular film “Twilight” is to get a sequel, “New Moon.” And online, the Web site Crunchyroll (crunchyroll.com) is starting to stream a vampire drama, “RH Plus,” from Japan.
To be sure, when it comes to the entertainment media jumping aboard bandwagons, too much is often never enough. But can CW executives be sure they are not overestimating the American public’s taste for blood?
“I don’t look at it as necessarily competing,” said Rick Haskins, executive vice president for marketing and brand strategy at CW, which is owned by the CBS Corporation and Time Warner. The HBO audience, for instance, is “very different” from CW’s, he added.
And while each of the “Twilight” movies is “a once-a-year mega-event,” Mr. Haskins said, “The Vampire Diaries” can be marketed as “a once-a-week event.”
“One is going to feed off the other,” he added, “no pun intended.”
(Giving Mr. Haskins a moment to get all the vampire wordplay out of his system, he also offered that the CW series is “going to be on Thirstdays.”)
Matt Diamond, chief executive at Alloy, which is a producer of “The Vampire Diaries,” said he was encouraged that CW executives were selling the series as “a good show that has vampires in it” rather than as a vampire-fest.
“We’re not naïve,” said Mr. Diamond, whose company publishes the “Vampire Diaries” books on which the series is based and is in business with CW on the “Gossip Girl” hit series. “If vampires become yesterday’s news, there will be an element of the show that will not be as popular.”
In the meantime, “in this demographic, you want to be hitting on what’s popular,” Mr. Diamond said. “It’s not always great to try to be the trendsetter if you want mass appeal.”
Steve Sternberg, a media analyst, said he believed that “The Vampire Diaries” had the best chance for success of all the new series arriving on CW for 2009-10, which also include an updated version of “Melrose Place” and “The Beautiful Life,” a show about young models.
“The Vampire Diaries” also lends itself to the “out-of-the-box promotions” that CW is planning, said Mr. Sternberg, who recently left his post as executive vice president for audience analysis at Magna, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.
•
Among other elements of the campaign being developed by Mr. Haskins are trinkets to be distributed in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. They include packages of dental floss bearing the words “fang floss” as well as sunscreen for vampires, relabeled as “sunscream” with a V.P.F. — Vampire Protection Factor — of 1,000, because “sun damage is the No. 1 killer of the undead.”
The online game, called “Race Against the Dawn,” will be available on the Mochi Media Web site (mochimedia.com/games). And a “Vamp Yourself” online widget, or small application, enabling computer users to create and share with friends vampiric versions of photographs, will be on aol.com and the CW Web site (cwtv.com).
Although promotional commercials for “The Vampire Diaries” are now running on CW, the myriad efforts off the network are particularly important because CW viewership falls significantly during the summer when almost all its programs are reruns.
“Fewer people have the opportunity to see network promos on CW’s own air,” Mr. Sternberg, the media analyst, said.
And coming fall shows like “The Vampire Diaries” are getting less attention than usual in the entertainment media, he added, because of the considerable coverage for new summer series like “Project Runway” and “Mad Men.”
Perhaps the next big TV idea is “The Mad Men Diaries,” about vampires on Madison Avenue. Their competitive advantage: they work nights.
source
|
__________________
“And I’m not going to fall in love with you
when we have an expiration date.”
Last edited by HappySquared; 08-24-2009 at 11:35 PM
|
God, I love this 
Visit Rachel Bilson 
As I've said at the Spoilers Board, this interests me. Plus that video is very mysterious. 
