Nope! Not that I’ve been made aware of. AR didn’t give us a reason why Universal was no longer involved. She just announced to us 11/26/16 that she had the rights back [X] and was developing a VC TV series. So I would assume that Universal rights expired, and they didn’t choose to renew. AR might have raised the renewal cost, too.
I hope we do get the backstory on that someday, but my guess is we never will. Probably the same kind of development hell that happened w/ movie!IWTV from ‘94, the rights were jostled around for almost 20 yrs bc, from what I understand:
- the material was/is very difficult to adapt with all the problematic and taboo stuff in it.*
- the filmmakers wanted to please the VC fans, but they also wanted to make something that people who had not read the books would want to go see! That’s probably one of the reasons for Banderas!Armand, btw. I’m sure the filmmakers had to choose between satisfying the VC fans and reducing the taboo stuff enough to make it more palatable for non-VC fans (Louis, an adult vampire, being seduced by a teenage-looking vampire, might have been too much to ask for in 1994 it might still be too taboo now).
- casting was tough,several first choice actors declined.
*@moral-cipher and I were talking about this, and the way ppl criticize canon, and that’s fine, I encourage it! But it is a very problematic series and just about every character is dysfunctional, every character has suffered or has caused suffering in others. The new motto for VC fandom might as well be:
I-want-my-IWTV 