See Right Through Me
Vampire Academy author, Richelle Mead, has taken to her official website to express her opinions on the recent Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters movie news. Yesterday, February 1, Zoey Deutch, Lucy Fry, and Danila Kozlovski were cast as Rose, Lissa, and Dimitri in the movie.
In her post, she talks about the movie title, the amount of input she has in the movie series, if the script stays true to the book, and so much more. Highlights can be found below.
On the movie title: “The big focus of the series is Rose and Lissa’s bond and ESPECIALLY Rose and Dimitri’s relationship. That’s what makes this stand out from other vampire books, so it was decided that VA would stay the movie series name but that the first movie would get a more distinctive title.
The team asked me for ideas, and I gave a few name suggestions that they considered. Blood Sisters is a title that other countries use who don’t want the first book and the series to have the same name. It’s a name I liked, and the team liked it too. It emphasizes the bond and will hopefully appeal to new fans.
Because here’s the thing: the more successful this movie is, the more likely it is that more can be made. An awesome movie will go nowhere if no one comes to see it. So, VA is the name of the franchise, and each movie gets its own name.
On the amount of input she has: “Preger Entertainment and their team have been AWESOME about keeping me in the loop and asking my opinions. Do I get ultimate say? No, but they’ve shown me script and actor choices and asked for my opinions, which is so cool because believe me when I say, a lot of authors don’t get that consideration. I’m super lucky.”
On if the script stays true to the book: No. I was actually blown away when I saw how true it was to the story. Seriously, it’s awesome. I have no idea where this Rose, Lissa, and Dimitri triangle rumor came from, but it’s NOT true, unless they completely rewrote the script in the last month. Rose and Dimitri have eyes for each other, and Lissa and Christian are kissing in the church.
The only differences are very minor things–like in The Hunger Games, where Prim gives Katniss the mockingjay pin. Is that what happened in the book? No, but it streamlines some things, saves them from hiring an extra actress, and doesn’t affect the main plot. Rest easy, there are no crazy changes, like werewolves attending the school or Rose and Christian discovering they’re long lost siblings. Although, that last one might be hilarious.
Seriously–the script is great. They’ve given Dimitri lines that are going to make you swoon, especially in the lust charm scene.”
To read the full article click here. Under the jump you will also find brief messages from the movie’s Director, Mark Waters, and Producer, Mike Preger, on the exciting casting news released today.
I am still reeling over the fact that this book is becoming a movie! I really hope they do it justice!
Mark Waters: “Let’s talk about coming up with the title of the film. First, let me clarify that it is a GROUP effort. The team is involved and many, many discussions are had. Many, many titles suggested. Not an easy decision b/c there are many factors to consider that have a lot to do with the MARKETING of the film. I say “vampire”, rest of the world says “Twilight.” And we all know, we are not Twilight! Second, having Richelle Mead a part of this process is important to every single member of our team. We took her suggestions very seriously because who knows this story better than her? No one! And Third, it’s the name of the German series! So we aren’t really changing the name per se. So get on board people! No room for hate on this page. And honestly…if you love VA, we should be able to title it “Supercalafragalisticexpialado
Everyone smile, we’re making a movie!!!”
Mike Pregers: “Ok everyone, listen up! Everything is GREAT! Let me explain what happened. As you already know, things are moving fast right now. First, while getting ready for everything that’s about to happen, we were working with our amazing new partners at Kintop Pictures – the people who are moving heaven and earth right now to get this picture going. As we were working together on a new draft of our announcement, the wrong copy got posted by mistake. As soon as we realized this we took it down, and were frantically trying to get the right information out there. Here’s the deal! The actual title is VAMPIRE ACADEMY: BLOOD SISTERS! This will also be the format for all the subsequent film titles, including the actual book titles of all the remaining novels in the series. So how did we decide this? First, the equally amazing people at IM GLOBAL, who will be selling the film to the international world did some testing of titles, as all good sales companies do before making any decisions.
What we discovered was the general public did not react greatly to the first title of just Vampire Academy. So what to do? What else could we do? We reached out to the smartest person we knew, our very own Richelle Mead, explained our problem and asked her to help us figure out a new title for just the first film. As it turns out, among the suggestions she made, was one, that incidentally, is the title of Book One in Germany. Sometimes, titles of books get changed for different markets around the world. So we took these suggestions back to our sales people and decided that Blood Sisters seemed like a good solution. After a lot of discussion between all the members of the team, we came up with the new title. The whole team liked it, so we went back to Richelle and told her we’d like to use it the way you now see it, and she also approved. So that’s the story. Sometimes you guys just have to have a little faith in what we’re doing. We have all been doing this for a very long time, and it’s important we get as many people to come see the first movie to make this the success we all know it will be. Trust in us, trust in Richelle. We only want the best for all of us. I promise everyone, when you see it, when you see how well it will work, you will be proud!!!”