Justin Cronin’s epic vampire apocalypse tale is coming to Fox this fall!
The vampire apocalypse, when it arrives, will be swift and brutal. The best-selling Justin Cronin novel The Passage depicts the unraveling of humanity at the hands of a rabies-like plague that the US government (of course) trying to observe the effects of this disease, as they suspect it may be a key to extending human life spans. And, they experiment upon the people least likely to say no, or to have the public concern about their well-being… death row inmates. What could possibly go wrong, right?
The book is composed of two completely separate tales. One is something of a road trip story, following a young orphan girl, Amy (Saniyya Sidney), who has been targeted by the government scientists to use as a test subject for a variant strain of this virus. One of the men, agent Brad Wolgast (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) sent to retrieve Amy goes rogue, and the two of them are on the run from THE LAW. Meanwhile, things back at the lab aren’t going so well. The viral strain proves that it creates powerful vampires. These are not your sexy The Hunger or Vampire Diaries vampires. Think Nosferatu, with some more insectoid qualities. And they are very powerful, and the military can only hope to contain this situation for so long.
That is largely the first half of the novel, and it appears that this exactly what Fox has in store for this season. The second half of the novel jumps forward almost a century, and reveals the outcome of the hubris of the government, and the outbreak that inevitably got out of control. The first half of the novel was a road trip, buddies on the run story, and the second half of the novel was a road-warrior like dystopian ruined world tale. I must admit that when I was listening to the audiobook, the shift in the dynamic at the halfway point in the book was rather jarring. But I enjoyed both stories very much.
It will be interesting to see how far along that the story will progress in the season. It is a fairly massive tome to get through, and the book is 879 pages. I do not expect they will be getting to the post-apocalyptic stuff, unless the series does well, as that will take a much bigger budget from Fox to support, but if it plays out right, it could be like The Walking Dead in structure. The limitations of blood and gore though, on network television may prove a little tricky, but if they can do Hannibal, I’m sure that they can get enough of the viscera to keep the horror fans engaged. I still probably would have preferred it to be on AMC or HBO, where the blood can really cut loose. The story is good enough that it should capture a large genre audience, and the trailer suggests a really high production quality… Fox spent some money here. Most importantly, it also appears that are adhering to Cronin’s book pretty closely.
If you go all the way back to our Podcast Episode IV where Mike and I discussed non-movie properties that we wanted to see converted in to Movies.
Here’s the trailer… are you interested?