We live in a world where franchises dominate Hollywood, and that means not only endless remakes and reboots but quite often the production of sequels to projects that are years, even decades old. A sequel to Top Gun became one of the highest-grossing movies of all-time last year, and one of Cruise’s former co-stars in a different project, Interview with the Vampire, wouldn’t be against revisiting his old character, because he'd like to know what happened to him.
Christian Slater recently appeared in the Disney+ series Willow, which picked up the story of the cult classic movie more than 20 years later. I recently had the chance to talk to Slater following the Willow first season conclusion and, as an actor who’s been making movies for many years, I asked if there were any of his old characters he might want to check in on. He suggested his character, the titular Interviewer in Interview with the Vampire, had his story left open-ended, and he admitted to being curious about what happened next. He explained…
I felt like, with Interview with the Vampire, I did get bitten on the neck by Tom Cruise and he says at the end of the movie ‘I’ll give you the choice that I never had.’ I’m curious to know what choice did that character make?
While several of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles books have become film adaptations, there was technically never a direct sequel to Interview with the Vampire starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. As such, the final scene, where, Cruise’s Lestat bites Christian Slater’s character, is never directly followed up on.
Based on the fact that Slater’s character specifically asks to be turned in the previous scene, it seems likely that the choice that he made was to become a vampire. Also, it has to be said that if the character chose not to be turned, it wouldn’t make for much of a movie.
There is one particularly interesting reason why following up on the ending of Interview with the Vampire movie would be potentially interesting which is that the movie ends differently than the original novel, while Christian Slater’s character does play an ongoing role in the larger franchise, and does eventually become a vampire, it happens quite differently in the books.
As such, a follow-up on the character today would almost certainly see Slater’s character in a very different place. This would allow for essentially a completely original story. So maybe an Interview with the Vampire legacy sequel isn’t that bad an idea. The fact that Interview is now a TV series likely means the rights situation would make such a film complicated to make at best, but if modern Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s never too late to return to a popular franchise.
