Today in vampires: Guillermo del Toro’s vampire book The Strain is now a vampire TV show

By John Semley | September 20, 2012 | 10:46pm

Aux Features TV

Seizing on the public’s now entirely self-sustaining interest in vampire mythologies, FX has edged out a bunch of other networks in the race to bring Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s horror trilogy The Strain to television. Deadline reports that the network has officially ordered a pilot to be co-written, directed, and produced by del Toro, with longtime Lost showrunner Carlton Cuse on board to oversee the series. Like the books, The Strain follows a long-brewing war between the living and the infectious undead, with a particular focus on vampire biology and physiology designed down to the last detail to make it seem, you know, less made-up.

As Deadline notes, the series “makes it a full circle” for del Toro, who originally conceived of The Strain as a TV show, but wasn’t able to sell it as such. It also marks a full circle for pop culture, which has now made the 360-degree transition from “interested in vampires” to “very interested about vampires” to “still interested in vampires, but with a bit more of a romantic twist, this time” to “Did you say vampires? Yes, sure. Of course”—a cycle that is likely to continue unabated for the foreseeable future, until all of film, TV, and literature just resigns itself to lumbering along, cold and predatory, sapping our resistance like some sort of scary, blood-sucking, undead thing.