The novel that I would like to see turned into a movie is Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead. It is the final book in the Vampire Academy series (there are six books in all: Vampire Academy, Frostbite, Shadow Kiss, Blood Promise, Spirit Bound, and Last Sacrifice). The final book is my favorite mostly because my favorite character, Sydney Sage, has a larger part in it than when she was introduced in Blood Promise and her one chapter, web-cam exclusive, appearance in Spirit Bound. Sydney is the main character in the recently released spin-off series Bloodlines, which I am currently in the process of reading. However, as much as I would love to see Last Sacrifice, as well as every book in the series and spin-off series on the big screen, I would want to see the movies in order from first to last, just like how I read the books.
Vampire Academy is an urban fantasy paranormal romance novel. Urban fantasy is a fantasy story that is primarily set in the city with some supernatural elements. Paranormal romance basically deals with some sort of supernatural love interests as opposed to just two normal everyday people. The story takes place at St. Vladimir's Academy, a boarding school for Moroi and dhampir guardian novices students, hidden deep within a Montana forest. For this, it would be cool to shoot on scene at a college somewhere but there would also need to be more of a gothic sort of theme going on. Most of the story in Vampire Academy takes place at the school so there would be scenes in classrooms, dorm rooms, a chapel, and outside. There wold also have to be one short scene in the mall and another scene in a small isolated cabin in the woods so, overall, as far as the cost of movies go, it shouldn't be too expensive. But if we can't find a University that is willing to rent us space, we could just build a model of the Academy and shoot that as the school and build sets for the classrooms and the like. But it would be much more time efficient and fun for the cast and crew to shoot on set.
The story is about two teenage girls who are best friends. The Rose Hathaway is an unpredictable and somewhat reckless dhampir who speaks her mind and Vasilisa Dragomir (Lissa to her friends), is an empathetic and caring Moroi princess. What I was thinking was that we could have Emma Roberts (from Valentine's Day and Nancy Drew) play Rose since she is about the right height and still young enough to pass for seventeen. Hopefully though her hair is still brown because if she dyed it blonde than we would need her to dye it back. I wouldn't want to use wigs unless they were a last resort. Amanda Seyfried (from Mamma Mia and Letter's to Juliet) would be perfect, in my opinion, to play Lissa, because she has the right hair color and height but I think she migh be just a bit too old for the role. I'm sure we could do something amazing with make up to make her look a tiny bit younger because there is just something about her face that screams vampire. As far as the fangs go, only the Moroi and Strigoi characters would need them. We basically would have to make it so that we don't even see their fangs until they feed because the Moroi characters need to be able to cover their teeth with their lips while learning how to remain hidden from humans.
The two main protagonist are Dimitri Belikov and Christian Ozera. Dimitri is an older dhampir and the main love interest for Rose. What I was thinking for this was to get Chris Hemsworth (from Thor) to play Dimitri; the role would be kind of similar to the one he played in the Thor movie. The hair length would be the same too, except that it would need to be brown. Christian is Lissa's love interest throughout the story; he has black hair and a dark gothic attitude and I have honestly no actor in mind to play him. This brings up another good point. This movie would be cool with these big actors, but what would be even more awesome was if we shot the movie with all unknowns, like a clean slate. And as for the director, I would totally want to direct the movie myself but if that isn't an option, I would like to see Catherine Hardwicke (directior of Red Riding Hood) direct this movie. And we would already know that she works well with Amanda Seyfried since they worked together in Red Riding Hood.
The central conflict of the story is that Lissa, being the last member of her family and possessing unknown magical abilities, must be protected and it is Rose's duty to do that. There are dangers outside the school and within. Outside the school are countless Strigoi who would love nothing more than to drink the blood of the last Dragomir. Inside the school is Mia Rinaldi, another Moroi girl who constantly bullies Lissa, who is a basically just a bitch (for lack of a better word) to Lissa and Rose. Her character would be perfect to cast a sixteen year old blonde unknown. There is also the danger Lissa is to herself. The magic she wields takes a physical and psychological toll on her that, overtime, can cause her to go insane if there is not a proper remedy found to combat it. At this point in the story, Lissa is taking anti-depression pills and slicing her arms with a blade when she feels depressed from the magic. The final danger is the main antagonist throughout the series, Victor Dashkov. He is an older Moroi who is suffering from an incurable sickness and wants to use Lissa's magic to heal him, but to do this he would have to keep her locked away. Personally, I would love to see Michael Shanks (from Stargate SG-1) play Victor but he is probably too young, but we can make him look older for the role. Either him or Anthony Head (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Merlin) since he would be old enough for the role and I think that his accent would be a neat thing to throw into the character. Both are really great actors and would be memorable villains for the story. However, I would probably lean more towards Anthony Head though for this role because of the age issue and even though I think Shanks is a better actor, Head would make a better villain.
The main target audience for this movie would mainly be teenagers, mostly teenage girls. It would appeal to them because the books are set in urban fantasy which teenagers like and because it adds fantasy adventures to places they are familiar with, in this case a school. Also, paranormal romance is becoming really popular nowadays with the idea of eternal love and the horribly directed Twilight movies. With all that in mind, it should be obvious that this type of movie (with vampires, romance, fantasy, and magic) would be incredibly popular with today's audience. Let me just say that if Twilight did as well as it did in theaters, then Vampire Academy has the ability to do at least five times as much damage in the box office. This series of books by Richelle Mead is already one of the international bestsellers, so it appeals to a wide variety of people world wide already. As for those people who like vampire movies, don't like to read, are illiterate, or have never heard of it since they don't browse bookstores, transforming these books into movies will have the potential to double the number of people that are already fans. For each person that has read Richelle Mead's books, they will each probably bring a friend who has never read the books and some of them will even see it twice or more. I guarantee that this movie would make a killing in the box office on opening night and for a few weeks there after. And with a strong enough trailer, than there will be even more people that go to see it just because they think it looks good.
According to A. O. Scott, fantasy literature involves a young hero that goes on some sort of quest or mission in order to save someone or something. Vampire Academy does indeed conform to this type of story telling pattern. Rose Hathaway as the young heroine is on a mission to protect her best friend, Lissa Dragomir, from Victor Dashkov, Strigoi, and from the magic of spirit Lissa wields which has dangerous effects on her. So Richelle Mead stuck to the basic pattern of storytelling that is common with most fantasy literature and most people could probably relate to wanting their best friends to be safe.
For the most part, all the scenes that would need to be shot are pretty simple and wouldn't cost much money. There are easy, low budget scenes like Rose walking through a lake, walking around the school's campus, and Rose punching Mia in the face at a dance. That last one would really be about as complicated as these scenes would get. The actors would have to have some form of stage combat training for hand to hand fight scenes. Only the people playing dhampir characters would really need to have to know how to do that since they would be battling the most. There also would be a scene where Rose jumps on a bench and it breaks which causes her to injure her leg. That could be faked pretty easily. There would also need to be a set with a fake car wreck for a short scene. The crash wouldn't need to be shot because we just need to see the damage caused by it for a quick dream sequence in the beginning. It would be better for the movie, and more powerful, if the crash was shown on screen but if there wasn't enough money in the budget for it then it could be skipped and we could just show the wreck. Getting into the more difficult scenes are the ones that would require the special effects for the Moroi when they use their magic. There would need to be some sort of special computerized effect to show that Mia used her water magic to drop snow on Lissa and Rose, when Lissa is tortured by a Moroi with air magic, and when Christian uses his fire magic to make flames appear all around Ralf Sarcozy making it appear as if he were on fire.
After this movie is finished and has proven itself a success in the theater, we can then begin working on making movies out of the other five books because as good as Vampire Academy is, the rest of the series is even better. This is just the beginning of the adventure and there is a whole lot more to learn about the Vampire Academy universe and a whole lot more important characters to meet. In Frostbite we meet two more main characters, Adrian and Eddie, and then in Shadow Kiss the romance between Rose and Dimitri finally takes off. Then we go to Russia with Rose in Blood Promise and are introduced to Sydney Sage, the human alchemist with the magic golden tattoo on her cheek. Finally, everything gets worse for the characters in Spirit Bound and Rose goes on the run in Last Sacrifice in order to fix everything. So it gets pretty good and it would be heart racing to watch all this unfold on the big screen. And then we can get started on the Bloodlines movie.
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| Richelle Mead, Author of the Vampire Academy and Bloodlines Series |
