Nerd News

The ban would apply to a range of social media platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.

Salesforce says it wants to use Fin's team and technology to improve Agentforce, its existing enterprise platform that businesses can use to build custom AI agents that automate tasks.

⚡ Quick Take

• It looks like the lights are back on for the Dead by Daylight film adaptation, as the production company has found writers and a director for it.
• Thordur Palsson will come on board to direct the Dead by Daylight movie.
• David Leslie Johnston-McGoldrick and Alexandre Aja will pen the script for the upcoming movie.
• Blumhouse-Atomic Monster brings this video adaptation movie to life.

A few years ago, we learned that Dead by Daylight would be yet another video game franchise to get a live-action adaptation. And, with the news that Blumhouse-Atomic Monster would be the force behind it, we surely thought things would move fast. Well, that wasn’t the case until now. It seems the lights are back on for the Dead by Daylight film adaptation, as the production company has found writers for it and a director. 

Behaviour Interactive

David Leslie Johnston-McGoldrick and Alexandre Aja will pen the script for Dead by Daylight’s upcoming movie. The former has worked with James Wan and helped to craft a few of The Conjuring films. Aja is a director who is known for his work on the Wes Craven remake The Hills Have Eyes, among other ventures.

Meanwhile, Thordur Palsson, who directed Iceland’s first-ever Netflix original series, The Valhalla Murders. Jason Blum, founder and CEO of Blumhouse Atomic Monster, shared of the Dead by Daylight director decision, “There is no better moment than the tenth anniversary to share this news. Thordur is the filmmaker we trust to carry ‘Dead by Daylight’ from the screen you play on to the big screen you watch in theaters.” 

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Additionally, Blum noted of the film’s writers, “What David and Alexandre bring to Dead by Daylight is a rare balance of character-driven storytelling and relentless genre intensity,” said Jason Blum, Blumhouse’s founder and CEO, in a statement. “Drawing from survival horror and psychological terror, their work establishes a world where fear is not just experienced, but earned. It is a cinematic blueprint designed to attract a director who can elevate that vision through performance and scale.”

Of course, it will still be a while before the film moves forward with casting, trailers, and all the things we love to see. But at least this Dead by Daylight project by Blumhouse is still in the works.

Originally published in March 2023.

The post DEAD BY DAYLIGHT Movie Sets Director appeared first on Nerdist.

Indian IT services company HCLTech is investing $150 million in the Bengaluru startup.

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What makes this combustible: at the very moment that tens of thousands of workers are being shown the door, a small cohort of AI insiders is becoming wealthy on a scale that's hard to comprehend.

Orbio announces $21 Million Series A in round led by Dawn Capital.

⚡ Quick Take

• AMC’s The Vampire Lestat pulls many elements from Anne Rice’s original novels, but also makes some fairly major changes too.

AMC’s The Vampire Lestat pulls many scenarios and moments straight from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Naturally, the series mainly pulls from book two, The Vampire Lestat, but also borrows from other titles in Rice’s 13-book series. Here, we detail where the AMC series draws direct inspiration from Rice’s prose, episode by episode, but especially where it deviates from the books in a big way. Let’s check out the biggest references and most major changes that The Vampire Lestat makes to Anne Rice’s books.

The Vampire Lestat Episode 1: “Detroit”AMCThe Vampire Lestat (1985), “Downtown Saturday Night in the 20th Century: 1984”: Location Changes, Louis Insertions, and Time Shifts

Lestat living adjacent to a garage band named Satan’s Night Out, who convince him to join their band, is all from how Anne Rice’s novel opens. This takes place in the chapter “Downtown Saturday Night in the 20th Century: 1984.” However, in The Vampire Lestat book, this all occurs in New Orleans, not Montreal.

Also, Lestat learns from the band that Louis has detailed their lives together in book form. In the AMC series, Lestat finds out the book via an email alert. He has already reunited with Louis in the AMC series, and the book serves to break them up again. This also marks a major change from The Vampire Lestat, which barely features Louis at all. In fact, in the book, Lesat forms a rock band partially to lure Louis back to him. Also, all of this takes place in the present day in the The Vampire Lestat series, and not in 1984.

The Vampire Lestat (1985), “Dionysus in San Francisco: 1985”: Dracula’s Daughter Changes LocationsAMC

In episode one, the Detroit vampires attack Lestat in the boutique hotel called Dracula’s Daughter. This references the vampire covens attacking him at his Halloween night concert in the climax of Rice’s The Vampire Lestat. However, in the book, Dracula’s Daughter is a bar in San Francisco, not a hotel.

The Vampire Lestat, Episode 2: “Toledo” AMCThe Vampire Lestat (1985),”Lelio Rising”: Lestat’s Stuttering is a TV Series Invention

Lestat’s flashbacks to his mortal life in 18th-century France are how he begins his story in Rice’s The Vampire Lestat. All the details about his cruel older brothers and father tormenting him as a child are from the opening portions of the novel, “Lelio Rising.” Lestat de Lioncourt, taking on the task of killing the wolves attacking the local village, is also from this section of the novel. So is his close relationship with his mother, Gabriella.

However, Lestat’s struggles with stuttering as a young child, which The Vampire Lestat spends a great deal of time on, are an invention of the AMC series.

The Queen of the Damned (1988), “The Short, Happy Life of Baby Jenks and the Fang Gang”: The Fang Gang and Baby Jenks Change From Book to The Vampire Lestat Series

The name of the Detroit vampires, the Fang Gang, comes from the third Vampire Chronicles novel, The Queen of the Damned. But in the Anne Rice novel, the Fang Gang were not against Lestat for exposing the secrets of the undead to the world. Instead, they wanted to join him. The Fang Gang in the AMC series, meanwhile, is attempting to kill Lestat for breaking “The Great Laws.”

This is what most vampires were threatening to do at the start of the novel, The Queen of the Damned. Additionally, in the novels, Baby Jenks is a newly created vampire who is a part of the Fang Gang. She is killed by Queen Akasha when she rises. In the show, that has yet to occur, marking another change between The Vampire Lestat series and Anne Rice’s books.

The Vampire Lestat (1985), “Downtown Saturday Night in the 20th Century: 1984”: Who Is Telling the Truth? AMC+

When Daniel Molloy and Louis talk about Daniel’s publishing of Interview with the Vampire, Louis says he didn’t like how he came across in it. He says he was a liar, and not just a “Lying to myself kind of liar, a f#%*ing liar.” Daniel says Lestat claims an entire scenario described in Interview with the Vampire, with Lestat attacking them on a train, flat out never happened. This tracks with Lestat’s revelations in the opening chapter of The Vampire Lestat. This is where he says some of Louis’ confessions about him were complete fabrications. In the TV series, it remains unclear if either one of them is telling the full truth.

The Vampire Lestat (1985) “Viaticum for the Marquise.”AMC

Lestat’s recollections of making his dying mother into a vampire come from the section of The Vampire Lestat titled “Viaticum for the Marquise.” Gabriella’s decision to become a vampire right away is from this section of the book. One big deviation is that in the AMC series, Lestat and Gabriella return to Lestat’s ancestral home and kill Lestat’s brothers. Gabriella then kills her now-blind husband, and they leave their bodies for their children to find. In the novels, Lestat’s blind father survives, escapes the French Revolution, and flees to New Orleans. In Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Lestat asks Louis to kill his father, because he can’t bring himself to do it. This is a major change to the text and in Lestat’s story in The Vampire Lestat.

We are quite certain the series will make even more changes to Rice’s text as the The Vampire Lestat continues. So keep checking back here for new updates. In the meantime, you can watch The Vampire Lestat and Interview with the Vampire on AMC and AMC+.

The post Major Changes AMC’s THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Makes to Anne Rice’s Books appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• We’ve heard about the Great Conversion a few times in Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat and it may become more important this season.
• The Great Conversion appears to be a movement by vampires to grow their numbers and take power in IWTV and The Vampire Lestat.
• The synopsis for The Vampire Lestat mentions the Great Conversion and we’ve recieved different bits of information about it.

The Great Conversion. We’ve been hearing about it distantly in Interview with the Vampire for two seasons. And the phrase was included in the synopsis for The Vampire Lestat. Now, we hear it again as the season begins in earnest. But the Great Conversion is not a storyline from Anne Rice’s books, so there’s not exactly a direct analog we can turn to as we examine this Vampire phenomenon in Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat. So, what is The Vampire Lestat‘s the Great Conversion, and what do we know about it from Interview with the Vampire and the current season? Let’s dive in.

AMCThe Great Conversion in Interview with the Vampire

In Interview with the Vampire, the Great Conversion was mentioned twice. Once by Louis de Point du Lac in his interview with Daniel Molloy. And once by Talamasca Agent, Raglan James. Here’s what we learn about The Great Conversion in these instances.

Louis Introduces The Great Conversion as a Vampiric Movement

Louis shares the following in Interview with the Vampire season one, episode two, in response to a question from Daniel about whether the vampires in the world have mastered their instincts, “Just the opposite, most of them are slaves to the blood… Exhausted from decades, centuries, of hiding, giddy to increase their numbers.” And then adds that this spurred by the “Pandemic, the unraveling of geopolitical foundations…” And notes, “One of them a brute in Madagscar called it the Great Conversion.”

When Daniel expresses some dubiousness about whether humans would want to be converted, Louis scoffs, “Yes, what on earth would a meth-addicted son of a coal miner in West Virgina want with eternal life? Or the Arab youth whose family were wiped from existenced from a Western drone?”

AMC

In all, this makes us feel like the Great Conversion is a vampiric movement to well… convert humanity to vampirism. And well, we feel like if we were vampires, always forced to hide our true nature, we might not be so opposed to it either. And to Louis’ point, wouldn’t eternal life be of interest to many mortals?

But the way Louis describes, the Great Conversion is a loose collection of disgruntled vampires, trying to push vampirism forward. Is the Great Conversion actually a meaningful meaningful movement in the world of Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat? We guess we need a bit more information to know the truth about that.

Raglan James Adds in a Few Details About The Great ConversionAMC Networks

And when one needs information, the Talamasca is a pretty good place to start. In Interview with the Vampire season two, Talamasca agent, Raglan James (who we see lurking in the first episode of The Vampire Lestat) offers us a few more details about the Great Conversion. He reveals in season two, episode three, “We were tracking 900 of them a month ago.. We’re tracking 1,600 now. The Great Conversion. It’s real, it’s happening.”

Okay, a near doubling of Vampires in the matter of a month does seem more serious that just errant grumbles in the night. As we mentioned, The Great Conversion is not a part of Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, or any other of Anne Rice’s books. But in the context of the series, it does feel like the vampires are gathering, amassing numbers in a purposeful way, to the end of… a vampiric world order? The decimation of mortals? It’s hard to say as of yet.

The Great Conversion in the Synopsis for The Vampire Lestat

In the plot description for The Vampire Lestat, we learn, “In the new rock and roll centric season, the Vampire Lestat goes on an electric multi-city tour while being haunted by ‘muses’ from his wild and rebellious past. As his band’s popularity and star power rises, so does Lestat’s influence over vampires and humans alike, leaving others to contend with Lestat’s power in the face of the Great Conversion, an unnatural surge in the vampire population. In addition to Reid, The Vampire Lestat stars Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, Delainey Hayles and Jennifer Ehle and is executive produced by award-winning producer Mark Johnson, creator, writer and showrunner Rolin Jones, Hannah Moscovitch, along with Christopher Rice and the late Anne Rice.”

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But what is Lestat’s power in the face of the Great Conversion? We know Lestat is singing songs about being a vampire, more specifically his life as a vampire. Could these songs serve to make mortals interested in vampirism? Or conversely, will they give humans too much knoweldge about the vampire, perhaps enough to make them dangerous? So far, we can’t be sure.

The Great Conversion in The Vampire Lestat

The Great Conversion has only been brought up minimaly in The Vampire Lestat‘s first episodes. In episode one, Lestat listens to the vampire voices discussing his tour. Some of them seem to echo the sentiments of the Great Conversion as they consider his music, calling for vampires to “make more.”

Then in episode two of The Vampire Lestat, Gabriella tells Lestat that she fancies one of the strippers she kissed in an Ohio bar. “Predatory spirit. A good candidate for the Great Conversion.” Seems like the Great Conversion is on someone’s mind… Very curious.

So, What Is the Great Conversion?AMC

Ultimately, The Vampire Lestat‘s Great Conversion appears to be a quickly growing, somehwhat organized movement/effort by vampires to increase their numbers and find more of a footing in this world. Undoubtedly, Daniel Molloy’s book, which flagrently reveals truths (and untruths) about vampires and The Vampire Lestat’s musical tour, will have some impact on whether other vampires wish to join them in the metaphorical sun and how humans come to see vampires, whether as real or extra false.

In The Vampire Lestat book, the Vampire Akasha is awakened by Lestat’s music, with devestating plans for both vampire and human kind. As mentioned, the Great Conversion is not a part of the books’ plot… But perhaps here, something about the mass formation of new vampires will not please the Queen.

We’ll surely learn more about the Great Conversion as The Vampire Lestat continues to air. The Vampire Lestat releases at 9 pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+. You can also read The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice today as you wait for the next episode of the series to arrive.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

The post What Is the Great Conversion in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT? appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Episode two of The Vampire Lestat sheds some light on the vampire bond between Armand and Daniel and how it manifests. And it is ROMANTIC.

Unfortunately, the vampire Armand does not appear in episode two of The Vampire Lestat. And yet, his presence hovers intensely over the narrative as we finally spend an honest moment with his fledgling, Daniel. In the first couple of episodes of The Vampire Lestat, Daniel is in fine form. He busily needles at Lestat with an icy humor and a sharp tongue, guzzles blood from a hookah, and overall drips with snark and disdain as the tour’s resident lovable menace to society. Absolutely, though there’s not a trace of transformation trauma on Daniel. No sir. He loves being a vampire. But in episode two, we get a brief moment where Daniel’s walls drop, and we see a brush of what’s underneath, something yearning and vulnerable. And for Daniel, much to the delight of Devil’s Minion shippers, this The Vampire Lestat moment comes courtesy of Armand… Or at least the impact of the vampiric bond that lives between Armand and Daniel. And yeahhh, to us, the way Armand and Daniel’s maker/fledgling connection manifests couldn’t be more romantic.

AMC

It’s hard being a vampire whose maker has abandoned you. Doubly hard when you broke your only vampire friend’s trust to publish a book about his life, and inadvertently caused yet another breakup for him. But the good thing about vampiric life is that it tends to be long. And Louis begrudgingly agrees to speak to Daniel again in The Vampire Lestat episode two. Only, we bet he wishes he didn’t when Daniel starts to wax poetically about his bond with Armand, the vampiric equivalent of girl talk, we suppose… Except this time it involves Louis’ manipulative ex, who lied to him for over 70 years, so it’s not surprising he’s not too thrilled about the topic. We, however, are seated.

“I have this weird thing that happens where suddenly everyone around me disappears, like the rapture’s come… and I… You know, I feel him.” Daniel confesses to Louis, suddenly stripped of his cackling shrewdness and draped in wide-eyed helplessness. And phew, we have to hand it to Eric Bogosian, who plays Daniel; the delivery of these lines is absolutely crushing. For me, a person invested in this romantic relationship, it stabs me right in my heart. Daniel’s obvious loneliness, the hesitant way he clearly wants to talk about Armand and their bond, but has been locking away the thoughts, even from, especially from, himself—all of that comes flooding to the surface in this brief moment. And the incredible skill it takes to make us feel every bit of Daniel’s vampiric infancy, the way he’s lost, looking for an anchor that isn’t there, we cannot say enough about it.

AMC

Also incredible is the deadpan, unimpressed way Jacob Anderson’s Louis delivers, “Armand?” in response to Daniel’s confession, making me briefly cackle. But Daniel presses on, self-depricating and wry, asking “Yeah…That happen with you and Lestat?” Louis confirms it didn’t. (“No. Sounds weird.”) And they move on. But I’m still stuck in that moment.

There’s a lot to unpack here. Of course, according to Louis in Interview with the Vampire season one, all vampires are connected to their makers in an intense, emotional way, and vice versa. Louis, not immune to poetic maker whims himself, describes his own connection with Lestat in the following gorgeous way. “The vampire bond. There is no human equivalent… It’s a bond that can never fully be severed. A bond like that makes you believe there are only two of you on the planet. Freedom and chastity wrapped in one person.” And, in season two of Interview with the Vampire, it’s implied that after Louis transforms Claudia’s companion, Madeleine, into a vampire, she can sense his feelings, and he can sense her presence and absence. While in both cases, a powerful tie exists, it does seem like Louis’ great love for Lestat makes his bond with his maker even stronger and more affecting.

AMC

Which leads us to Armand, Daniel, and the case of the missing universe. Because even though Louis notes his bond with Lestat “[makes] him believe there are only two of [them] on the planet,” we guess he means that figuratively, not literally. Whereas Daniel seems to be indicating he’s experiencing… an actual falling away of reality that leaves only Daniel and the feeling of Armand in existence, when Armand isn’t even there… That we know of. That feels like a pretty powerful bond to us. A bond of love, we might extrapolate? If it’s magnifying the impact of the maker/fledgling connection even beyond where Louis and Lestat’s bond lives, taking it into completely new territory.

We don’t yet know exactly how Daniel was turned in Interview with the Vampire, and it sounds like we may not know for certain until season four. We also don’t know whether fan theories based on Anne Rice’s books, which speculate that Armand and Daniel fell in love when Daniel was young, only for Armand to erase those memories at some point, hold any water. What we do know is that we can’t imagine anything more beautifully romantic and deliciously toxic than the whole world turning to nothing, leaving only Armand and Daniel in it, as a reflection of their vampiric bond. Inject it. Put it in my veins.

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Weirdly, I’m reminded of Wanda and Vision from the MCU, who were meant to be the romantic heart of the franchise. And though I personally didn’t really super resonate with their love story, even I could see their most intense line was point-perfect. In Avengers: Infinity War, Wanda has to destroy Vision, and as she does, he tells her that she doesn’t have to worry about him because, “I just feel you.” In a sense, it feels to me like Daniel isn’t really feeling much of anything at this point, but sometimes he just feels Armand.

All of this just over the ephemeral vampiric bond between Armand and Daniel, and the pair haven’t even shared a scene yet in The Vampire Lestat. I know I speak for many people other than myself when I say, “and then what happens?”

The Vampire Lestat releases at 9 pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+. You can also read The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice today as you wait for the next episode of the series to arrive.

Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She is ready for Devil’s Minion to become canon so one of her ships can finally sail.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

The post The Manifestation of Armand and Daniel’s Vampire Bond Is SO Romantic (THE VAMPIRE LESTAT) appeared first on Nerdist.

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⚡ Quick Take

• Star Sam Reid and showrunner Rolin Jones discuss the dynamic between Lestat and Armand in The Vampire Lestat.
• Sam Reid notes that “hate is too strong a word” for them and that they have “a flirty, sexy vibe,” but also can be vicious to one another at the drop of a hat.
• Rolin Jones notes that Lestat does respect Armand.

In the world of Interview with the Vampire, now known as The Vampire Lestat, there exists a tangle of complicated relationships that are some of the most winding, twisted, dark, and deliciously queer to ever appear on our screens. That’s because when you have a set of immortal vampires whose humanity is not withered, but heightened, by their endless lives, and who have little choice but to spend forever with one another, things tend to get messy. Of course, when we think of The Vampire Lestat, some obvious relationships spring to mind: Louis and Lestat, Claudia and Madeleine, and Armand and Daniel, to name a few. But, as a lifelong enjoyer of what you might call “the rare pair,” the relationship between Armand and Lestat (what some call “Lesmand”) also piques my interest.

In prior seasons, we’ve gotten glimpses of the two in Armand’s recollections of the past, however apocryphal they may be. And this year, we’ll likely see more from the past, but also some of the present relationship between Lestat and Armand. In The Vampire Lestat book by Anne Rice, Armand and Lestat have somewhat of an oscillating relationship between love and hate, but how does that manifest in the series? Here’s what Sam Reid had to say about what exists between Lestat and Armand in The Vampire Lestat.

AMC

Reid shared of Lesmand, “I don’t know if there’s a lot of… I mean, hate is such a strong word. I think that their dynamic is actually pretty accurate to the books. I think there’s like a flirty, sexy vibe that they’ve got that goes on between the two of them. Lestat thinks he’s a joke, like he thinks he is in the book. But Armand can come back and fucking own Lestat and destroy his life at a moment’s notice when he wants to. And Lestat’s aware of that. And I think the dynamic is their dynamic. I love the Armand and Lestat scenes in this season. So I think we’re doing it. Yeah.”

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Showrunner Rolin Jones added, “And I think Lestat is actually incredibly respectful. There’s a bit of VO [in one of the episodes] when Lestat introduces Armand that might be one of the most accurate descriptions of Armand yet. So there is some inherent respect too about his power.”

AMC

Lestat, of course, is largely so irreverent that his respect is no small thing. And even though he can be vicious to Armand, who can be wholly awful right back, we love the idea of this undercurrent of understanding between them. A relationship with naunce and complexity keeps us coming back for more, one that was all hate wouldn’t be interesting at all. As for the “flirty, sexy vibe,” we can confirm it’s strong. And we can’t wait for you all to see what Armand and Lestat get up to this season on The Vampire Lestat.

The Vampire Lestat (or season three of Interview with the Vampire) is currently streaming on AMC and AMC+. New episodes arrive Sundays at 9 pm PT/ET on AMC and at midnight on AMC+.

The post THE VAMPIRE LESTAT: Sam Reid on Lestat/Armand’s Complex Relationship, ‘I Love Their Dynamic’ appeared first on Nerdist.

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