There’s still a fair amount of time before Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters hits theaters — seriously, February 14 can’t come soon enough! — but that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty of VA treats to snack on in the meantime… like a Q&A with the screenwriter!
We had the chance to chat with Dan Waters about the Zoey Deutch-led film based off of author Richelle Mead‘s YA novel, and he spilled some of the juiciest details on the upcoming movie, including the comparisons to Twilight (with mentions of The Hunger Games and The Mortal Instruments as well), the bad-ass that is Dimitri Belikov, and the steamy necklace scene…
First off, we loved the teaser trailer, and we’re so excited for Vampire Academy! Tell us about your experience working with the movie.
Dan Waters: I hadn’t read the book, so you can imagine when the producers came and said, “Would you like to write Vampire Academy?” I thought, “Oh no, has my career come to this? Is this like a Saturday morning show? Is this like a Zack and Cody Go to Space? [However], when I read the book, I was exhilarated because I didn’t know the book. Then I immediately read all of the books before I even began thinking of doing the first movie. Then I was completely into it. I think when people say they’re sick of the vampire genre — believe me I was sick of it too — but to me when people are sick of a genre, that’s the best time to go into the genre, because that way you can play with the clichés and kind of move things around and mess with people’s brains. And I think Vampire Academy is the perfect vehicle to do that because it has so much more going on than just the vampires.
How involved were you with filming the movie? Were you on set a lot?
Dan: I was in London right before the movie started shooting [because I had to do all that last-minute work on the script], and then I was at the very start and the very end. That’s was probably the best thing for a writer because you don’t want to be there too much. Because when they see the writer, they’ll start to rewrite things and I thought we had the adaptation in a perfect place. Thank you for liking the teaser! I think people are over-analyzing it not knowing it’s just a one-minute piece of marketing that I think a lot of people get a little too crazy analyzing it because a lot of time the surface clichés are going to come through. And if you read the book, you know there’s a lot more complexity, a lot more going on then we could possibly show in a teaser.
Dan Waters: I hadn’t read the book, so you can imagine when the producers came and said, “Would you like to write Vampire Academy?” I thought, “Oh no, has my career come to this? Is this like a Saturday morning show? Is this like a Zack and Cody Go to Space? [However], when I read the book, I was exhilarated because I didn’t know the book. Then I immediately read all of the books before I even began thinking of doing the first movie. Then I was completely into it. I think when people say they’re sick of the vampire genre — believe me I was sick of it too — but to me when people are sick of a genre, that’s the best time to go into the genre, because that way you can play with the clichés and kind of move things around and mess with people’s brains. And I think Vampire Academy is the perfect vehicle to do that because it has so much more going on than just the vampires.
How involved were you with filming the movie? Were you on set a lot?
Dan: I was in London right before the movie started shooting [because I had to do all that last-minute work on the script], and then I was at the very start and the very end. That’s was probably the best thing for a writer because you don’t want to be there too much. Because when they see the writer, they’ll start to rewrite things and I thought we had the adaptation in a perfect place. Thank you for liking the teaser! I think people are over-analyzing it not knowing it’s just a one-minute piece of marketing that I think a lot of people get a little too crazy analyzing it because a lot of time the surface clichés are going to come through. And if you read the book, you know there’s a lot more complexity, a lot more going on then we could possibly show in a teaser.
Read more of the full interview where he talks about scenes, the cast, Dimitri and more at Teen!
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