Photo: Rose(Zoey Deutch),Lissa(Lucy Fry),Natalie(Sarah Hyland) [Weinstein Co]
Yes, Rose has a silver stake. Don't freak out.
When the 60-second teaser trailer for "Vampire Academy" premiered here on Yahoo Movies, fans got a bit nervous. Despite its sassy voiceover and quick cuts, eagle eyes caught onto some key moments that didn't quite mesh with the first book in Richelle Mead's bestselling series about a pair of teen vampire BFFs.
We get it … and so do the film's screenwriter, Dan Waters, and his brother Mark, who's directing it. And they want to make you happy.
"I have always had an attitude from the beginning that I would listen to fans and respect the fans, but not be their bitch," Dan told Yahoo Movies. "At some point, I know a little more about turning a book into a movie. I'm not one of these people who just take a paycheck and do anything, who just take the title and go with it. I'm adapting 'Vampire Academy' because I love 'Vampire Academy.'"
Before we get into Dan's explanation of some of his changes, here's one thing he didn't change that he totally wanted to: the title.
"I'm not crazy about the title — it's hard to tell the title to your adult friends," he confessed. "It sounds like Saturday morning cartoons … It just seems so kiddie. But it's so much more than that, obviously."
1. Rose has the silver stake. In the books, heroine and protector Rose Hathaway doesn't get her hands on the coveted Guardian weapon until the second book, but the trailer shows her clutching one. Dan's excuse? He wants to be able to make a second movie! "I'm sorry, I had to do it to make it interesting," he said. "When you are writing five books, you can move things at a deliberate pace. I think that without a great first movie, there is no second one." That's a fair reason, right?
2. Lissa's onto Rose and Dimitri a bit sooner. In the novels, Rose's Moroi royal BFF doesn't catch on to the palpable chemistry between Rose and her handsome mentor until several books in. That's just not realistic (yes, we're talking about realism in reference to avampire tale) when it comes to two best friends, especially two as interconnected as Rose and Lissa. "I did move a couple of elements," Dan confessed. "Lissa may suspect that Rose has a crush on Dimitri a little earlier than she does now, considering every best friend in the world wouldn't be able to keep that secret for four books. … What best friend who you are supernaturally bonded to is not going to pick up on that? I don't go crazy with it. There's no long discussion about it like, 'Hey, you are not going to believe it. I put this necklace on last night…' I don't go too far."
3. More Ms. Karp is coming. The teaser showed a quick flash of Rose hiding under a desk with a laptop that some saw as cause for concern. But Dan claims that's all part of Rose looking into the mysterious St. Vladimir Academy faculty member. "Me as the adaptor was about taking a lot of the material out of Rose's head and putting it on the screen. That where maybe she doesn't know as much about Ms. Karp as she thinks she does and that she has got to do some more detective work and a more active investigation instead of waiting for another dead animal to fall on her lap," he explained. "There's a moment in the teaser where she's hiding under the desk with a laptop and that has to do with that."
Deutch in 'Vampire Academy' (The Weinstein Company)
4. There will be minor tweaks to the timeline. "Most material is the same. It was definitely about sometimes taking scenes that you are familiar with and reordering them. There's a shopping scene in the book that happens before an ankle scene in the book, and I have the ankle scene happen before the shopping scene. Don't kill me."
5. We'll see Lissa's perspective. A little. While the books take place in Rose's head (even when she's in Lissa's head), the movie has to step outside that a bit, and the Waters brothers think you'll be thanking them for that. "We do have it both ways where the scenes that she is imagining, we're seeing Lissa in. It's not just completely from Rose's point of view," Dan explained. "There's definitely nothing grosser than watching Dominic Sherwood as Christian try to kiss a camera. We also have from Lissa's involvement in that scene too, which I think is interesting."
Bonus: What's this about dogs? "You can be the first to tell [the fans] that I added a talking dog to the movie," Dan told us point-blank … before cracking up. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding."
Stay tuned right here at Yahoo Movies for more "Vampire Academy" news coming your way, and be sure to mark your calendars for February 13, when the movie, starring Zoey Deutch and Lucy Fry, arrives in theaters.
Via Yahoo Movies
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