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Bang Bang: First Extended Look at ‘The Vampire Lestat’ Blasts Into Chaos at NYCC 2025

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6 months ago

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The crowd inside New York Comic Con’s Main Stage erupted as AMC unveiled an extended first look at The Vampire Lestat, the highly anticipated third season of Interview with the Vampire. For those who have followed Louis de Pointe du Lac’s tortured journey from New Orleans to Paris to some semblance of truth in Dubai, this new chapter promises something bolder, stranger, and far more drug-fueled.

I was in the audience as the footage rolled — a feverish blur of the past and present, blood-soaked intimacy, and Lestat’s unmistakable presence as the new frontman. I also had the chance to speak with the cast and creators earlier that day during a press conference that made one thing very clear: we are not ready for what this season is about to unleash.

The press conference deserves its own breakdown (believe me, there’s plenty to unpack there), but for now, let’s focus on the three-minute first look that completely shifted the trajectory of what I thought this story could be. In just a few breathless moments, The Vampire Lestat redefined the boundaries of Anne Rice’s world on screen, showing us a story that is visually richer, emotionally riskier, and vibrating with a dangerous kind of beauty that only this series can pull off.

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

“They Want the White Guy”

The footage opens with a familiar sight: Daniel and Louis, once again locked in conversation. But what’s different now is the gravity between them, the silence heavy with everything we know. Daniel, holding the now-published Interview with the Vampire in book form, tells Louis he’s been approached by Hollywood executives who want to adapt his story into a documentary.

The catch? They don’t want Louis. They want “the white guy.”

They want Lestat.

It’s a moment layered with irony and sting, a meta critique that speaks to visibility, race, and narrative control. If this clip is any indication, The Vampire Lestat isn’t shying away from those themes. It’s leaning in.

Louis and Daniel’s body language speaks volumes about where their relationship now stands. Daniel leans in, elbows pressed to the table, searching for some kind of reconciliation. Louis, on the other hand, sits back — spine straight, shoulders tense — a rigidity that had melted away during their earlier interviews but now returns with quiet fury. He’s upset with how the book turned out, how he’s been portrayed in its pages. “Passive, selfish, and a fucking liar,” he says. That word “passive” carries history. Anne Rice herself often described Louis that way, admitting that writing him was difficult because he represented the lowest point of her life. The show’s choice to bring that discomfort to the surface feels deeply intentional, transforming a meta-textual critique into a raw, human confrontation between two men bound by memory, resentment, and truth.

But Daniel clings to one word. Liar. He laughs, a dry, knowing sound, and flips open the book in his hands. That’s when we realize the copy he’s holding isn’t just any edition; it’s Lestat’s. The camera lingers on a page, the infamous train scene from Season 1 Episode 6, now defaced with furious handwriting scrawled across it: NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED. It’s one of those moments that perfectly encapsulates the show’s blend of humor and heartbreak.

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

The Screen Goes Black — And Then, All Hell Breaks Loose

What follows is a rockstar, drug-fueled, sex-drenched, and downright horrific montage of excess and resurrection. The imagery hits like a fever dream: flashes of neon, bodies in motion, sweat, glitter, blood. It’s Lestat unbound, alive in every sense of the word, the world bending to his appetite. The sequence feels like both a rebirth and a reckoning, like a sensory overload that reclaims the opulence of Rice’s novels but injects it with something raw, and modern. As the screen goes black, it’s not just the beginning of a montage, it’s the beginning of a whole new sound. An original track titled “Bang Bang” explodes to life, all drums, snarling guitar, and swaggering rhythm. It’s pure rock spectacle, channeling the glam ferocity of Bowie and Jagger with a theatrical edge straight out of Jesus Christ Superstar. The song doesn’t just accompany the visuals, but possesses them. Every cut hits like a cymbal crash, every image moving in sync with that feverish beat, heralding the arrival of The Vampire Lestat as both a character and a force of nature.

It’s too much to describe frame by frame (believe me, I tried). But this is the kind of sequence you’ll want to rewatch at 0.25 speed, because every blink hides something outrageous, beautiful, or horrifying. It’s visual excess as storytelling — and it works.

Blood, Dirt, and the 1700s: Origins of the Man, the Monster

Before we get completely lost in the modern madness, the montage flashes back to the 1700s, grounding Lestat’s chaos in the trauma that made him.

We see him as a child, wide-eyed, fragile, and human. Then, as a grown man, still mortal, still breakable, sunlight washing over him, his eyes a normal blue instead of the electric blue or violet they possess in his vampiric form. Around him, his family, made up of his cruel brothers, his abusive father, and his mother Gabriella (played by the stunning Jennifer Ehle), trapped in her own quiet rage.

There are dogs, horses, the rifle, the hunter’s life — all the bones of the myth being set in place. And then, the terror starts creeping in.

Nicki — yes, that Nicki — appears again. His return on the screen since last seen in Interview with the Vampire Season 2 (“No Pain”) is nothing short of nightmarish: bloodied wrists, no hands, dragging wounds across a mirrored surface. And if you think it can’t get worse, then comes Magnus, Lestat’s maker, finally on screen for the first time.

In the blink of an eye, we see human Lestat being dragged — maybe across his Paris bedroom, maybe across Magnus’s tower — clawing at the ground, fighting against the transformation that will end his life and begin his eternity. It’s horrifying and I fully believe no one is ready for what’s to come when that is on the screen.

And just when you think it’s over, we catch a glimpse of a towering, ancient presence lifting Lestat’s caked-in-dirt-and-blood body and dropping him back onto the earth’s surface — rebirth, rejection, damnation all in one gesture. While the footage doesn’t explicitly identify him, it’s clear from the sequence and context that this is Marius, one of the most pivotal figures in The Vampire Chronicles. Even in this brief, indirect appearance, the character radiates power and menace, promising to expand the mythology in ways that could reshape the entire series.

Sex, Fame, and the Vampire as Performance

The modern day is just as chaotic — if not more so — than the past.

Hate Me shoes. Tour buses. Blinding lights. Lestat on stage, drenched in sweat and glory, a god and a monster rolled into one. We see him playing violin for a crowd — a perfect echo of his human life, transformed into a performance for the damned.

And then that image — the image — of Lestat falling backward into the crowd, arms outstretched, lit from all sides. Hands reaching for him from above and below. It’s divine and demonic. It’s religion.

But the montage doesn’t stop. There’s a car crash. Raglan James. Real Rashid. Louis and Lestat strutting in impossibly high-fashion looks (no one’s surviving that). Claudia in her dress from Season 1, Episode 7, her hand burnt. Lestat’s face dragged across drywall until it crumbles to dust. A strip club with mama. Baby Jenks getting bitten under the stage lights. Gabriella kissing a woman.

Somewhere between all of it, Lestat glimpses two specters: Magnus cloaked in shadow, Louis bathed in golden light. Past and present collapse. Lestat’s own hallucinations this season erupt in multitudes of hurt and love, horror and happiness, despair and desire.

And finally — Louis, sexier than ever, covered in blood, finger to his lips, shushing what looks to be Bruce. Just the thought of Louis (and maybe Lestat?) hunting him down is enough to alter my brain chemistry.

Litigation and Jealousy: Louis and Lestat, Round Infinity

We also (finally!) got a clear look at that scene — the one that went semi-viral in grainy SDCC footage this summer — Louis and Lestat in some kind of litigation setting. It’s electric. Even fully clothed, seated a full table apart, surrounded by lawyers and legal jargon, the chemistry between them is suffocating. The conversation inevitably turns to Armand, a name that still hangs between them after everything that went down in the first two seasons. What unfolds is jealousy, hypocrisy, heartbreak — all at once. Lestat’s possessiveness is infuriating and deeply human; he’s jealous of what he himself once destroyed. And Louis — deliberately — brushes his very handsome lawyer’s arm mid-discussion, a small gesture that makes Lestat’s face flicker with pain and longing. It’s devastating and intimate in a way only Interview with the Vampire can manage.

It’s also ungodly funny. Lestat is so easy to ragebait, and Louis? He’s an expert at pushing those buttons. No one is doing intertwined souls, ego, and eternal love like these two.

Final Montage from Hell: Blood, Hallucination, and the Punchline

The footage closes with a supercut from hell, a final, rapid-fire montage that practically demands to be watched in slow motion (I did…several times). We see Lestat bathing in blood — or something close to it — and it’s an image that might just top anything the show’s ever dared before. Dr. Fareed and Nicki appear in some type of hallucinatory image. There’s a big ol’ blunt in play. Then, Louis, in that same blood-drenched look, gets splattered with even more crimson across his perfect face, all before ending as Lestat backstage turns with a flourish, blood soaking his hair, flinging droplets straight at the camera. Daniel’s voice cuts in with one final line: “Fucking asshole.” It’s hilarious. It’s chaotic. It’s perfect.

The Gospel of Lestat

When the screen finally cut to black, the crowd at NYCC was buzzing; half laughing, half stunned, all collectively feral. The Vampire Lestat isn’t just Interview with the Vampire Season 3; it’s the series breaking its own boundaries, exploding into something operatic, terrifying, and deeply personal. This footage was messy, gorgeous, and impossible to look away from—a fever dream of fame, guilt, immortality, and art. What struck me most wasn’t just the spectacle, but the emotional clarity underneath it: the show still understands that at its core, this is a love story. A brutal, obsessive, world-ending love story. And if this first look is any indication, we’re about to witness it burn brighter — and bloodier — than ever before.

If this is just the first look, God help us when the full thing drops.

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Friday the 13th Delivers Big News for ‘The Vampire Lestat,’ Including New Song, Title Sequence, and Premiere Date

Published

2 months ago

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March 13, 2026

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Friday the 13th is proving to be a fruitful time for fans of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, now retitled The Vampire Lestat for its upcoming third season.

Last month, on Friday the 13th, The Vampire Lestat released the first official single from the vampire rockstar himself, “Long Face.” The track arrived alongside a press release written in Lestat’s unmistakable voice, in which he took a few delightfully snide shots at his collaborator, the incredibly talented composer Daniel Hart. (We’re still #TeamDanielHart over here, by the way.)

Now, on another Friday the 13th — this time in March — AMC has delivered three new confirmations at once.

First, a brand-new single titled “All Fall Down.”

Second, the official title sequence for Season 3, which features “All Fall Down” over a frenetic, electric montage of scenes and imagery (including the Toronto skyline, where the entirety of Season 3 was filmed). The sequence is a chaotic burst of color and performance, dominated by a shirtless rockstar Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) who takes up the spotlight. It all culminates with the burning green eyes of Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) — and a cloud-gifted, airborne Lestat.

And finally, the biggest news of all:

AMC’s The Vampire Lestat will officially premiere on June 7.

That’s less than three months away, which is a stretch of time that somehow feels like both an eternity and incredibly close.

There was also yet another press release from Daniel Hart and the Vampire Lestat himself:

Said Daniel Hart: “’All Fall Down’ is both the title track for the new season and the idea for a song by the Vampire Lestat from early in the band’s life. Much like ‘Long face’, it feels heavily influenced by Bowie, T. Rex, and other 70s rock’n’roll stars who were looking back to the blues as much as they were looking up to the stars for inspiration. ‘All Fall Down’ marks a time in this vampire band’s life when they were still figuring out exactly what their sound was, and before Lestat himself started to change personas and explore other musical styles. At the same time, with ‘All Fall Down’, we tried to capture the overall feeling of this new Lestat we get to know better and better throughout the season: more wild, more raw, more self-deprecatingly funny than ever before.” 

Said the Vampire Lestat: “’All Fall Down’ is mercifully only 68 seconds long. That’s 54 seconds more Daniel Hart than anyone should suffer. I like the harmonies on the chorus. I did those.” 

The Vampire Lestat might be the next big thing, but that ego of his might prove to be his PR downfall.

Just two weeks ago, the first official clip from the new season premiered during IGN Fan Fest. The scene revealed Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis de Pointe du Lac flirting over FaceTime — something that likely brought every Loustat fan to a complete stop before they (or maybe it was just us) screamed.

But that flirtation doesn’t last long.

Notifications begin lighting up Lestat’s iPad (a sentence strange enough to type on its own), revealing something far more troubling: an author profile for Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), whose book Interview with the Vampire is now sitting on bookstore shelves everywhere.

An enraged Lestat storms into his nearest bookstore in Montreal to pick up a copy, very much mirroring the moment from the 1985 novel The Vampire Lestat. Once inside, however, things only get worse as he overhears bookstore workers discussing Armand with far more…affection than they have for him.

To say he’s unhappy would be an understatement.

Interview with the Vampire is, after all, the infamous interview Louis gives to Daniel as they revisit the story he first began telling in 1973. But the version that finally reaches the public is, no doubt, anything but straightforward. By the end of the second season, Louis attempts to destroy the interview entirely, hoping to erase the story rather than see it published. Instead, the book still finds its way onto shelves, and what the public reads is not exactly what Louis originally said, nor a complete version of the truth he himself only begins to understand in the Season 2 finale.

Now, with The Vampire Lestat arriving this summer, audiences will finally see what happens next.

For those looking for answers — for Lestat’s side of the story, for the continuation of Louis’ journey, and for more of those Loustat moments — we finally have a date to look forward to.

June 7.

We’ll definitely be seeing you there.

The Vampire Lestat will premiere on AMC/AMC+ on June 7, 2026. Keep your eyes on iHorror for all the news about it!

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The Rock God Era Begins in Fiery New ‘The Vampire Lestat’ Clip

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2 months ago

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February 25, 2026

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The Vampire Lestat, the third season of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, is officially set to premiere in June 2026.

On February 25, IGN Fan Fest kicked off promptly at 1:00 p.m. ET/10:00 a.m. PT, launching a packed showcase of exclusives spanning film, television, and gaming. For vampire fans, the promise of a The Vampire Lestat exclusive was more than welcome after months of brief teasers released since filming wrapped in October 2025.

For lack of a better description, The Vampire Lestat is a new interview.

The first two seasons of AMC’s critically acclaimed series followed Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) as he reckoned with fractured memories, buried truths, and the devastating realization that the story he told — and believed — was incomplete. Those seasons largely adapted the first novel in The Vampire Chronicles, the 1976 book that introduced Anne Rice’s lush, violent, and philosophically tangled vampires to the world and reshaped vampirism forever. 

When The Vampire Lestat novel was published almost a decade later in 1985, it flipped the narrative perspective. Lestat de Lioncourt stepped forward to tell his own story so that he could both challenge Louis and reveal everything he hadn’t (or wouldn’t) before.

The television series appears to be following that same vein, and the new clip that premiered at IGN Fan Fest makes that very clear.

Jacob Anderson as Louis De Pointe Du Lac – IWTV: The Vampire Lestat _ Season 3 – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

Season 1 of Interview with the Vampire opens with journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) arriving at Louis’ (or, more correctly, Armand’s (Assad Zaman)) elusive Dubai penthouse for a second attempt at an interview abandoned almost fifty years earlier. Louis claimed to be seeking “truth and reconciliation.” By the end of Season 2, that truth had clawed its way into the light, and it was anything but simple. The finale closed with Louis reuniting with Lestat (Sam Reid), Daniel’s unexpected vampiric turning at the hands of the ever-manipulative Armand, and Louis seemingly ending the interview for good by burning the tapes and the laptop that contained it all.

Of course, he hadn’t accounted for cloud storage.

The new clip opens intimately: Lestat seated at a piano, humming as he works out a melody. He’s on FaceTime with Louis, and it’s a delightfully surreal image, these ancient vampires navigating modern technology. Their exchange is easy, familiar, and charged with something stronger than admiration but not something either would, at this moment, admit to be love. Lestat asks Louis what he thinks of the song. Louis offers an opinion. Lestat deems it too simple. Louis clarifies, amused and affectionate.

Then comes the invitation.

“You should come visit,” Lestat says. “I have a space above the bed in one of the guest rooms I can’t find a painting for.”

“Oh, the guest room?” Louis replies. “You want me to come and see your guest room.”

The flirtation is obvious, and it’s tender, and it feels like the precipice of something fragile and hopeful. And yet — as with everything between them, it cannot remain uncomplicated for long.

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – IWTV: The Vampire Lestat _ Season 3 – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

Mid-conversation, Lestat pulls up a link to an entertainment website spotlighting a bestselling author: Daniel Molloy, writer of Interview with the Vampire.

He asks Louis if he knows who Daniel is.

And from there, it all unravels.

Within moments, they’re arguing. A moment later, Lestat is shown in a bookshop, picking up a copy of Interview with the Vampire while employees casually chatter about wanting to sleep with Armand — Louis’ lover and companion of more than seventy years. The sting is immediate and layered: betrayal, jealousy, fear.

It’s a pointed callback to the 1985 novel.  On page 12 of the first edition, Lestat, upon introducing himself to a band he wanted to meet, finds they are familiar with the name Lestat and, specifically, a vampire named Lestat.  

“From the other room they brought it, a small pulp paper “novel” that was falling to pieces…I got a preternatural chill of sorts at the sight of the cover. Interview with the Vampire. Something to do with a mortal boy getting one of the undead to tell the tale. With their permission, I went into the other room, stretched out on their bed, and began to read…And when the night was empty and still, I heard the voices of Interview with the Vampire singing to me, as if they sang from the grave. I read the book over and over. And then in a moment of contemptible anger, I shredded it to bits.”

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, Page 12.

His anger is personal, but it’s also existential. The vampires have laws, and the greatest of them is secrecy. As Lestat explains in the novel, “Because if there is one law that all vampires hold sacred it is that you do not tell mortals about us.” Louis’ confession is not just reckless; it’s extremely dangerous. Others will come for him.

That fear — for Louis’ safety, for their exposure, for the fragile order of the vampire world — is what propels Lestat toward fame. It drives him to become a rockstar god who can seize control of the narrative before it destroys them both, and to step into a role that’s always existed within him, but is now necessary: the one who will stand in the spotlight, take the fire, and ensure that no one ever hurts Louis again.

The IGN Fan Fest clip solidifies that turning point. We are watching the moment Lestat realizes the story is no longer contained and he decides to deal with it. Loudly.

And perhaps the most thrilling thing of all: we now have confirmation of a June 2026 premiere.

What The Vampire Lestat ultimately has in store — musically, emotionally, catastrophically — remains to be seen. But if this clip is any indication, the new and old interviews are both truly just beginning.

Watch the new IGN exclusive clip of The Vampire Lestat below.

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4 Real Warren Cases That Could Be The Basis For Upcoming Series

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2 months ago

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February 23, 2026

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The Conjuring franchise is headed to the small screen via HBO/Max. The movies were based on real-life hauntings. Whatever you think of Ed and Lorraine Warren, their onscreen personas played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively, were very likable, and we’d love to see them come back by way of the series. Spin-offs like Annabelle and The Nun are not directly based on their case files; they are stand-alone “fictionalized” properties.

Last time we left Ed and Lorraine in the cinematic universe was Last Rites, where, Spoiler Alert, they retired at the end of the film.

Therefore, it is up in the air as to what the TV series will be about. Some think their daughter Judy will take over. She was played by Mia Tomlinson in the film. The timelines are probably going to have to be dealt with, or they could use different actors than Farmiga and Wilson to portray the younger Warrens; Hollywood has a way of working things out.

Whatever the case, we did some investigating of our own and found some Warren cases that might make for great stories should HBO/Max need any ideas. The Warrens say they investigated over 10,000 cases of hauntings and possessions, so there’s no shortage of material. But we picked four:

The Snedeker House

It’s 1986, and Al Snedeker has just rented a house in Southington, Connecticut, for his family. After they moved in, they made a grim discovery in the basement, which led them to the realization that the house was once a funeral home.

The family suffered lots of phenomena, such as the ever-present smell of decomposing flesh, and they even experienced sexual assault. Their eldest son got most of the attention as he claimed to see the ghosts that never moved on.

The Snedekers contacted the Warrens for help, and they confirmed that the dead clients of the former business were mad because the funeral director had desecrated their bodies. This was the inspiration for A Haunting in Connecticut, but might make a great remake under The Conjuring banner.

The Amityville Haunting

Probably the most overdone story about a haunted house, but still remains the most famous. This, like “The Haunting in Connecticut,” might make a great Warren interpretation under the production of James Wan. If you need a recap, the Lutzes moved into their Long Island dream home in 1975.

The Dutch Colonial-style home was a steal, and the family even came to terms with the fact that only a year before it was the scene of a mass family shooting by the previous owner’s son Ron DeFeo Jr. It wasn’t long after the Lutz’s moved in before they encountered possessions, loud banging noises, swarms of flies, and “bleeding walls.” The Lutz’s famously only stayed in the house for 28 days, and the Warrens were called in to do a cleansing.

The Donovan family

Lorraine & Ed Warren

The Donovan family haunting played out much like the Amityville one, but this one was allegedly started by their daughter Patty who used a spirit board for an entire year, communicating with what she said was a young boy. The spirit would compliment Patty and foretell her future.

But things began to get out of hand as the family’s cars would inexplicably be toyed with, wallpaper would unstick itself, running water would turn into blood, and beastly snarls would emanate from the walls.

One year, it rained rocks on the house. Eventually, the Warrens were called in to investigate and they discovered that Patty had not been communicating with a young boy through the Ouija board at all, but a malevolent demon. A priest was eventually called in to cleanse the house, which apparently worked.

The Case of Maurice Theriault

This one is an odd story about Maurice Theriault, who is said to have been possessed by a demon. Theriault was a farmer whose nickname was Frenchy. Although there is a reference to Frenchy in The Nun, his real story has yet to be told.

In real life, people said Frenchy had two sides: a caring and loving side toward adults, but a very abusive side toward children. He developed near super-human strength and had knowledge of people and places that he didn’t know. The people in the New England town in which he lived began to notice that Frenchie would sometimes appear bloody. They also say that he would appear in two places at once.

The Warrens themselves claimed that they saw Frenchy bleeding from his eyes and words appearing on his back. The Catholic Church got involved and performed an exorcism on Frenchy, which they say was successful.

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