Gary Oldman started his film career churning out off-the-wall, batshit-crazy characters before mellowing into more nuanced performances. Now it appears he’s mellowing beyond the art of acting itself and has turned to more mannerly pursuits, like writing novels about gold-rush-era vampires. Deadline reports that he’s collaborating on Blood Riders with his long-time manager, Douglas Urbanski, and Simon & Schuster will publish the book next spring.
Urbanski describes the process of creating Blood Riders over several years, saying that they rejected an initial, absurd suggestion that Oldman write a memoir drawing from his decades working in mainstream and independent cinema. “I couldn’t think of anything more boring,” Urbanski said. Instead of writing a book about Oldman’s unbearably boring Hollywood career, the two spent nights in the producer’s kitchen, mapping out an overarching mythology that “[reinvents] the rules and realities of vampires, and sex, and the power of love.”
Urbanski did not disclose the plot, except to say that it chronicles the adventures of Magnus (not the Anne Rice one), who flees a busted gold-rush town carrying a vampire’s curse. If the adventures of Magnus prove successful, the pair have planned out a trilogy of stories. First, though, the two have to actually finish the book, which means that Leonardo DiCaprio has probably already begun filming the first Blood Riders as we speak.