Jason Dohring and Shannyn Sossamon move on to HBO

Speaking of new projects for our Moonlight cast..... Josef and Coraline have been hired to work on HBO, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

HBO populates its comedy pilots
Dohring, Burton, Sossamon and, Mescudi join casts
By Kimberly Nordyke

HBO is firming up the casts of its comedy pilots "Washingtonienne" and "How to Make It in America," adding Jason Dohring and Kate Burton to the former and Shannyn Sossamon and Scott Mescudi to the latter.

"Washingtonienne," based on Jessica Cutler's book, revolves around the professional and personal lives of three smart, sophisticated 28-year-old girls working on Capitol Hill.

Dohring will play Spencer, a senior legislative assistant for the same senator for whom Jackie (Rachel Taylor) works. Burton will play Joy, the senator's put-upon personal assistant.

Dohring ("Veronica Mars") is repped by Innovative Artists and manager Joel Stevens. Burton ("What Just Happened?") is repped by Gersh Agency and Principal Entertainment.

"America" centers on two enterprising downtown twentysomethings (Bryan Greenburg, Victor Rasuk) who hustle their way through New York determined to achieve the American Dream.

Sossamon will play Gingy, a gallery owner who is a close friend of the duo. Mescudi will play Domingo. Sossamon is repped by Paradigm.

http://tinyurl.com/5agfgv

Photograph ~ Jason Dohring and Shannyn Sossamon during the Moonlight tv show panel at the 2007 San Diego Comic Con.

True Blood makes its television debut tonight

The new True Blood Vampire tv series premieres tonight on HBO! Here are a couple of videos about the show for you.

True Blood Television Show Trailer


Hollywood 411 ~ TV Guide ~ True Blood : Interview with creator, executive producer, writer & director Alan Ball

Alan Ball, writer of AMERICAN BEAUTY and SIX FEET UNDER, comes back to HBO with TRUE BLOOD starring Academy Award winner Anna Paquin (as Sookie Stackhouse). He's done with the dead and has moved on to the undead. Get a taste for the new series here.

Moonlight in Associated Press article about True Blood

Moonlight & Alex O'Loughlin briefly mentioned in a new AP article about HBO's True Blood tv series (which premieres this Sunday, September 7th). I highlighted the part about our show in yellow.

Southern vampire novels adapted for HBO's new series 'True Blood'
Canadian Press: Kinney Littlefield, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

As fictional lovers go, bubbly blond Sookie Stackhouse and tall, pale Bill Compton are as massively mismatched as they come.

After all, Sookie (Winnipeg-born Anna Paquin) is exuberantly human and Bill (English actor Stephen Moyer) is, well, totally undead in HBO's flamboyant new vampire saga, "True Blood."

"Bill is really genteel but that doesn't stop him from being blood-hungry," Moyer says of his menacing 173-year-old character in "True Blood," adapted for television by Alan Ball ("Six Feet Under") from the popular series of Southern vampire novels by Charlaine Harris.

"The tension between Bill and Sookie is quite palpable," Moyer says in between scenes in which the courtly vampire, who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, escorts his lady friend Sookie, a telepathic roadhouse waitress, home on a dark and eerie night.

That sexually suggestive tension is key to "True Blood," which will be seen in Canada on Movie Central and The Movie Network. Set in a small Louisiana town (actually the Santa Monica Mountains northwest of Los Angeles), the edgy series chronicles a time when synthetic blood supplies enable Bill and other vampires to live openly among humans, without necessarily feeding on them.

Like Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) in the classic vampire soap opera "Dark Shadows" (1966-1971), Bill has returned to his ancestral home, where he woos Sookie and tries to fit into human society. Like Frid's Barnabas, Moyer's Bill is an unresolved paradox - part seductive protagonist, part menacing monster.

"He's not typically vampiric," says Moyer, who played a vampire in the Brit miniseries "Ultraviolet." No long black cape and ghoulish grin for Bill, who dresses yuppie-casual. "But we do get to see him sort of sex-starved at one point," Moyer says. "And there are moments when he is quite confrontational with other vampires, when other people are predatory with Sookie."

"True Blood" also pushes the content boundaries of premium cable, with plenty of extravagantly gushing arteries and over-the-top bedroom antics to rival Showtime's "Californication" - all mixed with a good dose of Southern gothic goofiness.

Ball was looking to produce "lighter" fare after the life-and-death introspection of critically acclaimed "Six Feet Under."

"Charlaine has just created this amazing world that's funny and vibrant and scary and also a sort of social treatise, you know what I mean?" Ball says.

"The books are violent and that's part of the appeal," he says. "It's visceral and predatory and unapologetically sexual. And it's unapologetically romantic in the sense of an old-fashioned romance novel."

The centuries-old vampire metaphor is "also about the terrors of intimacy, and about any kind of misunderstood, hated, feared minority - homosexuals, other cultures," Ball says. "When I first pitched 'True Blood' to HBO, I called it 'popcorn TV for smart people.' "

Still, vampire series are not always surefire. Last season, CBS spiked "Moonlight," despite its loyal following for undead hero Mick St. John (Alex O'Loughlin).

Like "Moonlight," "True Blood" plays on the thrill of a vampire-human hookup. But the mechanics of Bill and Sookie's romance proved tricky for Moyer and Paquin during filming.

"You do get fangs caught in places," Paquin says, remembering her first lip lock with Bill's lethal teeth, which pop down when he's lost in bloodlust. "Perhaps it's like people with braces trying to make it work. Puncture wounds aside, one gets used to it," she teases.

Although Ball says his series "is true to the spirit of the novels," there are differences. "True Blood" takes the powerful and ruthless nature of vampire clans a little further than the novels do, he says. Sookie narrates the Harris books but not "True Blood." Instead, Ball has given Sookie a female best friend and confidante named Tara (Rutina Wesley).

The events in the 12 episodes play out over a fast and furious two-week period, like they do in Harris' first vampire novel, "Dead Until Dark." As in the novels, Sookie's mysterious boss Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) is very much in evidence, keeping close to Sookie.

But Ball has greatly expanded the characters of the roadhouse's gay short-order cook, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), and Sookie's bumbling and sexually indefatigable brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten).

"They've given me some really outrageous story lines," Kwanten says. "Jason just jumps into things before he thinks about them. He thinks he's Louisiana's answer to Casanova. Any reservations or inhibitions I had before starting the show have well and truly gone now in a good way," he says of his sex scenes. Then he laughs. "One of the grips jokes that he sees me naked more than he does his girlfriend."

Photograph ~ Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) & Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) showing his Vampire fangs in True Blood tv series.

Video ~ True Blood : Invitation to the Set

True Blood premieres a week from today on HBO. I am eager to check out their Vampire world. Funny.... the lead actors on this tv show are also from other countries. Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse) is from New Zealand and Stephen Moyer (Bill Compton) is from England. Ooooooooo ~ and Ryan Kwanten (Sookie's brother, Jason) is Australian.

In this video, we get a peek behind the scenes on the set of True Blood. Anna Paquin, Charlaine Harris (author of the book series on which the program is based), Ryan Kwanten, Alan Ball (executive producer & creator), Stephen Moyer, Sam Trammell (Sam Merlotte) are all interviewed. They tell us a bit about what the series has in store.

We can watch & rate True Blood when it debuts next Sunday, September 7th, 2008. Please, let me know what you think of the show :)

Lovebitten ~ Vampire & human dating service

www.Lovebitten.net online dating "for Vampires and the humans who love them" ;> This tv commercial parody is too funny. It is just like all those real dating service ads that we have seen over & over again.

The Styx River Suites Motel for Vampires

What does a traveling vamp do for shelter while on the road? If Vampires are near Shreveport, LA, one hotel is there to cater to their needs ~ The Styx River Suites motel. Somehow, I don't see Josef Kostan staying at a place like this. *grin*

"You don't have to worry about getting staked while you sleep."

Moonlight mentioned in article about new poster for HBO's True Blood television series

Speaking of the current Vampire frenzy keeping Moonlight in the minds of entertainment reporters, bloggers and critics........ Jane Boursaw, from TV Squad, mentions our show in her post about the new True Blood tv show poster issued by HBO.

"Thou shall not crave thy neighbor"

HBO releases True Blood poster (time to stock up on strawberry jam)
by Jane Boursaw

Ewww! This poster is so creepy, it makes me want to hurl! And watch this show! Of course, the fact that Alan Ball is behind it -- the man who helmed one of my favorite shows ever, Six Feet Under -- has nothing to do with it. Nope, it doesn't. Okay, I'm lying. It has everything to do with it.

HBO's True Blood, starring Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer, is set to premiere on Sept. 7 at 9 p.m. Here's the newly released poster for it. Makes you want to dig into a jar of strawberry jam, doesn't it?

Based on Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire novel series, the show follows the world of vampires set in small-town Louisiana. They're able to co-exist with humans by drinking a Japanese-manufactured synthetic blood. (Well, what fun is that?!)

We'll learn more about the show later this week at Comic-Con 2008, where a panel is scheduled. Also, check out the official web site.

And what is up with all the vampires lately? We've still got loyal fans mourning the loss of Moonlight, and on the big screen, vampire devotees everywhere await the release of Twilight, based on the books by Stephenie Meyer, on Dec. 12, 2008.

Are vampires the new wizards? Or are we just a blood-crazed society at the moment?

http://tinyurl.com/6zgw2x

New Vampire projects bring more attention to Moonlight

Moonlight is getting lots of great media attention with the launch of other Vampire projects in the news. iF Magazine has written many articles about our show, as well as interviewed Alex O'Loughlin, Sophia Myles and Jason Dohring. They made sure to include Moonlight in their piece about HBO's new vamp series, True Blood.

Television : Breaking News: 'MOONLIGHT' MAY BE DEAD, BUT THERE'S ALWAYS 'TRUE BLOOD'

HBO gets into the vampire game with the Alan Ball produced horror series
By CARL CORTEZ

LOCATION: New Orleans

THE SKINNY: First ANGEL is staked by the WB and last season CBS dusted their vampire series MOONLIGHT after one season despite support from a strong legion of fans. With vampire series getting little respect on TV, why would HBO greenlight a vampire series called TRUE BLOOD?

Two words: Alan Ball.

Yes, the creator of SIX FEET UNDER and the screenwriter of AMERICAN BEAUTY has brought Charlaine Harris’ series of novels focusing on a psychic girl (Anna Paquin) who falls in love with a mysterious vamp (Stephen Moyer) to the small screen with sex, blood, and more sex.

“We’re all about bringing in an idea with enormous passion and talent and when Alan came in to us with the idea of TRUE BLOOD, it was a no brainer,” says Michael Lombardo, HBO’s President of Programming Group and West Coast Operations, at this year's summer press tour.

“And when he described what he wanted to do, that was the reason to do it," he adds. "We weren’t looking for Alan to do a ‘vampire show.’ We were looking to be in business with Alan again, and he had a great take on a great series of books.”

http://ifmagazine.com/new.asp?article=6500

Photo ~ Sookie Stackhouse ( Anna Paquin ) and Bill Compton ( Stephen Moyer ) True Blood television series

Perez Hilton ~ Vampires Are In

Blogger Perez Hilton has written a post saying what we have all been discussing for months! Vampire stories are more popular than ever right now. Books.... Southern Vampire series of Charlaine Harris and Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer, Movies... such as (of course) Twilight, Lost Boys 2 : The Tribe, Rise with Lucy Liu & Michael Chiklis. TV... True Blood on HBO. CBS could have been a leader with an already established television show in Moonlight. :(

The Vampyre girl in me is excited by all the projects coming out, and can not believe how short sighted the executives at CBS were with our show! *sigh*

Vampires Are In
by Perez Hilton

Vampires will be showing their teeth the next few months!

On the first Saturday in August, teens are expected to attend midnight parties at bookstores across the land in droves to celebrate the release of author Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book of her Twilight series.

Breaking Dawn has a first run printing of 3.5 million copies.

Talk about popular!

And then, not too long after that, the first Twilight movie should be hitting movie screens worldwide.

Also, in September, HBO's premiering the vampire show True Blood on September 7th.

True Blood is based on a series of novels by Charlaine Harris. It's set in a world where vampires have come out into the open, thanks to the development of synthetic blood that allows them to survive without feeding on humans.

Anna Paquin will star as a mind-reading waitress who's drawn to a vampire who arrives in her small Louisiana town.

The undead live on!

http://perezhilton.com/2008-07-10-vampires-are-in