| Rating: | ★★★★★ |
| Category: | Movies |
| Genre: | Horror |
True Blood is an American television series based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries books by Charlaine Harris and adapted for television by Alan Ball. The series is produced by HBO in association with Ball's own production company.
The show details the fictional co-existence of vampires and humans in a small Louisiana town after Japanese-made synthetic blood – "TruBlood" – becomes available for purchase. Anna Paquin stars as Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress at a diner who falls in love with one of the vampires, Bill Compton (portrayed by Stephen Moyer).
The show will premiere on September 7, 2008.
Cast and characters
* Anna Paquin as Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress in a smalltown diner
* Stephen Moyer as Bill Compton, a vampire with whom Sookie falls in love
* Alexander Skarsgard as Eric Northman, a thousand-year-old vampire Viking
* Ryan Kwanten as Sookie's brother Jason Stackhouse
* Sam Trammell as Sam Merlotte, the owner of the restaurant in which Sookie works
* Rutina Wesley as Tara Thornton, Sookie's best friend. In the leaked pilot, Tara is played by Brook Kerr.
* Jim Parrack as Hoyt Fortenberry.
* Chris Bauer as detective Andy Bellefleur.
* Nelsan Ellis as Sookie's coworker Lafayette Reynolds.
* Lynn Collins as Dawn Green, Jason Stackhouse's love interest.
* William Sanderson as Bud Dearborne.
* Lorin McCraley as a Grabbit Quick Clerk
Series creator Alan Ball had previously worked with premium cable channel HBO on Six Feet Under, which ran for five seasons. In October 2005, after Six Feet Under's finale, Ball signed a two-year agreement with HBO to develop and produce original programming for the network.
True Blood became the first project under the deal, after Ball read the first book in Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampires Mysteries series "on impulse" and became interested in "bringing [Harris'] vision to television." The project's hour-long pilot was ordered concurrently with the finalization of the aforementioned development deal and was written, directed and produced by Ball.
The pilot was shot in the early summer of 2007 and was officially ordered to series in August, at which point Ball had already written several more episodes. Gary Calamar, the music director for the series, said he's working on a soundtrack for the show that is "swampy, bluesy and spooky" and that he plans to feature local Louisiana musicians. Calamar's work includes the sound for Dexter, Weeds and Entourage.
The premiere of True Blood has been prefaced with a viral marketing/ARG campaign, based at BloodCopy.com. This has included setting up multiple websites, encoding web address into unmarked envelopes mailed to high profile blog writers and others, and even performances by a "vampire" who is attempting to reach out to others of their kind, to discuss the recent creation of "TruBlood", a material apparently pivotal to the initial plot.
A MySpace account with the username "Blood" has, as of June 19, uploaded two videos; one entitled "Vampire Taste Test - Tru Blood vs Human", and one called "BloodCopy Exclusive INTERVIEW WITH SAMSON THE VAMPIRE". There is a wiki at trublood.wikidot.com which collates information on the campaign.
A rough version of the pilot has been released/leaked online.
