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EXCLUSIVE: The vampires are moving from Amazon to HBO.
A comedy series based on Grady Hendrix’s book The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires has landed at HBO with the author writing alongside The Righteous Gemstones duo Danny McBride and Edi Patterson.
The project was previously in development at Amazon with Patrick Moran’s PKM Productions but has now moved to the Warner Bros. Discovery premium network without Moran’s involvement.
Hendrix, McBride and Patterson will exec produce, alongside Brandon James for McBride’s Rough House. Quirk Books, which published the novel, will also have an exec producer credit.
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires follows a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger that may be a vampire killing their children.
The book, which was published in May 2021, is set in Charleston and is described as Steel Magnolias meets Dracula.
It follows Patricia Campbell, whose life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime. At these meetings they’re as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are about their own families.
One evening after book club, Patricia is viciously attacked by an elderly neighbor, bringing the neighbor’s handsome nephew, James Harris, into her life. James is well traveled and well read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn’t felt in years. But when children on the other side of town go missing, their deaths written off by local police, Patricia has reason to believe James Harris is more of a Bundy than a Brad Pitt. The real problem? James is a monster of a different kind—and Patricia has already invited him in. Little by little, James will insinuate himself into Patricia’s life and try to take everything she took for granted—including the book club—but she won’t surrender without a fight in this blood-soaked tale of neighborly kindness gone wrong.
Hendrix is the author of over a dozen books including My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which was adapted for film by Prime Video in 2022, and Horrorstör, which was previously in the works as a series for Fox and is now in the works as a movie with New Republic Pictures. He also co-wrote the script for 2017 movie Mohawk and Satanic Panic for Fangoria.
Danny McBride and Edi Patterson star in HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones as Jesse and Judy Gemstone. The series, which has been renewed for a fourth season, was created by McBride, who exec produces alongside his Rough House Pictures co-founders David Gordon Green and Jody Hill.
McBride, who also created HBO comedy series Vice Principals and Eastbound & Down, has also written movies including Halloween and its two recent spinoffs and The Exorcist: Believer.
Patterson has also starred in series including Resident Alien and The Last O.G. as well as extensive voice work on series including Ten Year Old Tom, Teenage Euthanasia, Harley Quinn, The Great North and Knuckles. She has written episodes of The Righteous Gemstones as well as Showtime sketch comedy The Underground and Cartoon Network’s We Bare Bears.