Black Friday. I swore I was taking today off – and I am. But I wanted to share the interview that was supposed to go up last Friday. So here’s the last Vampire Academy Friday for this year. Producers Don Murphy and Susan Montford sat down and talked with us, Hypable, and Page to Premiere when we were on our set visit. Thank you so much to the producers and everyone.
We can’t thank everyone enough for the time, and the knowledge that they gave us. We firmly believe that Vampire Academy will be a hit. Here you go!~Fangirlish
Let’s start with you and your involvement and why you wanted to option it?
Don Murphy: Susan and I had been working with a guy named Mike Preger who is one of the producers, he’s based in Florida, on a project…
Susan Montford: On a modern day version of Day of the Triffids.
Don: Yes, a modern day version of Day of the Triffids. It’s an
old classic British Science Fiction Novel. He called us up one day and
said I have another project that I want you to do based on a series of
young adult books called Vampire Academy. I said, “Are you crazy? That
sounds horrible.” (laughs) Our reaction was we already have a project,
we don’t need any other projects, thanks. He was like No, No you gotta
read it. He just kinda kept at it until we read it, and we kinda woke up
in the middle of the third one and said this is amazing, we have to try
to get involved with this. That started when we were on the set of Reel
Steal a couple of years ago, a Hugh Jackman movie we did together. So
we put together a real nice pitch book, sent it out to all the studios,
the sales, synopsis, and why this is going to be the next big thing.
They all said that we were crazy. But, considering that they said that
about Transformer’s too, we didn’t listen to them.
Susan: They were also saying because Twilight existed there wasn’t a need to making it.
Don: Ah Vampires, vampires are done you know. We would go into
meetings and say that the Twilight crowd is not 95 year old ladies, it
was a different crowd.