We don’t really do TV shows but we do when they try to become Movies, today it emerged HBO’s hit TV series True Blood which recently concluded its 3rd season has something else in mind. Series creator and Oscar winner [American beauty] Alan Ball is reportedly eying the film adaptation as a potential directing vehicle for himself.
Work has begun on the task of bringing True Blood to the big screen, which would likely not happen until after at least another season of the show has aired. True Blood is well known for its edgy tone and adults-only content – a quality that the show’s cover for a recent edition of Rolling Stone magazine not-so-subtly alluded to. Cable television series are not subject to the rating regulations that govern public access shows and have developed a reputation for (at times) going out of their way to include explicit and graphic material – shows like True Blood or Sparticus: Blood & Sand have both very much earned that rep.
Most HBO shows have high production standards and are virtually cinematic in terms of their design and structure – this week’s new series, Boardwalk Empire being a prime example. True Blood is very much a professional production overall and it features numerous in-demand talents both in front and behind the camera. Does the franchise stand to gain anything by making the jump to film [from an artistic perspective and not a financial one, that is]? A True Blood movie would likely focus more on the show’s main characters – especially that of Sookie Stackhouse [Anna Paquin] and her vampiric lover Bill Compton [Stephen Moyer] – and include fewer subplots and supporting players than that of an average 13 episode season. Fans will surely be divided over whether or not that would be a good thing.
Alan Ball is only credited for directing two episodes of True Blood – both from season one – and his sole feature-length film directorial effort was the moderately-received 2007 pic, Towelhead. The Oscar-winning screenwriter of American Beauty is still arguably the ideal candidate for creating a True Blood movie that feels like more than just an entire season of the show that has been edited down to a running time of two to three hours [Sex & the City].
