The Anne Rice Renaissance Is Moving Beyond Vampires

It’s an amazing time to be an Anne Rice fan. Is this a weird thing to say in the year of our Lord 2025? Maybe. But ever since AMC launched its critically acclaimed Interview with the Vampire series in 2022, we’ve essentially been living in a golden age of Rice adaptations, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

Interview will rebrand itself The Vampire Lestat when it returns for its highly anticipated third season next year, and the series has already spawned two spinoffs in the network’s “Immortal Universe”—Mayfair Witches and Talamasca: The Secret Order—and there are rumors that more are in the pipeline. (Give me a Marius series, Mark Johnson! Pandora is right there!) But our new Rice Renaissance doesn’t seem content to stay in the world of vampires—or on the small screen. 

Fashion maven and occasional director Tom Ford is currently set to helm a feature film adaptation of Cry to Heaven, one of Rice’s most lyrical, melodramatic, and disturbing stories. Set in 18th-century Italy, the book delves into the mysterious and uncomfortable world of Italian castrati, male singers who were castrated before puberty to preserve their high-pitched voices for church choirs and opera performances.

Cry to Heaven focuses on a pair of central characters: Peasant-born Guido Maffeo, who was castrated at the age of six, and his eventual pupil, Tonio Treschi, the son of a Venetian noble family. As the pair struggles to succeed in the competitive and often cutthroat world of opera, a dark tale of revenge, family strife, and political intrigue unspools around them. And, because this is an Anne Rice book, there’s also lots of sex and violence, all written using some of the most decadent and memorable turns of phrase imaginable. 

Ford will write, direct, and produce the project, and the book’s opulent setting and lush feel seem a natural fit for him as a storyteller. Its darker narrative elements will give the A Single Man director plenty to work with when it comes to themes of betrayal and identity—much of the story is about how becoming castrati affects our characters’ sense of self and belonging. He’s also assembled a positively stacked cast of A-listers to help bring Rice’s version of early modern Italy to life. 

The film will reportedly star (deep breath) Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ciarán Hinds, George MacKay, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Paul Bettany, Owen Cooper, Hunter Schafer, Thandiwe Newton, Daryl McCormack, Hauk Hannemann, and Pedro Pascal’s sister Lux Pascal. It will also, for those who are interested in such things, mark the feature film debut of pop superstar Adele (and if she doesn’t somehow manage to sing in this movie, I’ll eat my proverbial hat). 

Who’s playing who is still under wraps, but with filming slated to get underway in early 2026 with an eye to an autumn release, hopefully, we won’t have to wait all that long to find out.