Peacock has already dropped three episodes of its new TV series Vampire Academy on Thursday, September 15. As fans now have their first good look at the show, co-showrunner Marquerite MacIntyre revealed it would have some differences compared to its source, Richelle Mead’s book series or the 2014 movie adaptation of the same name.
St. Vladimir Academy is back as Vampire Academy begins, but the institution has undergone a few changes. So, what could these changes be? Read on!
Vampire Academy’s Difference in Location
The academy remains the training ground for human-vampire hybrids called dhampir and the full-blooded spell-casting vampires known as moroi. However, the university will not be in Montana this time, and the vampires’ royal court won’t be found in Pennsylvania, just like in the books.
So, where it’s located? MacIntyre told TVLine it’s in the “beautiful and epic setting” of Spain.
“You get all this visual candy, plus the whole world comes together in one dominion,” she said. “Nothing is separate anymore. It’s a cool way to tell the story.”
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The show also features diversity with its cast members from all over the world.
“No one told us that we needed to have uniform accents or any kind of cultural uniformity,” co-showrunner Julie Plec added. “They let us celebrate casting from all over the world, letting these actors be their true, authentic selves, rather than just casting based on what it says the character looks like in the books.”
The Change in Main Characters’ Storyline
Another major change that fans are about to see is the story of the main characters, the best friends Lissa Dragomir (Daniela Nieves) and Rose Hathaway (Sisi Stringer).
Their relationship is the main story of the series, but it will be different from what fans think they’re supposed to see.
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“So much of Rose and Lissa’s friendship — what they experienced growing up, the things they saw, the trauma that happened to them, the losses they suffered — was told as part of their backstory,” Plec continued. “The first thing we did was ask, ‘Why would we want to tell that as a memory when we could watch it happen in real-time?’ So we backed up the beginning of the story in the context of the girls’ friendship while still doing other elements of the story that were specific to the first book.”
The Difference Between the Movie, TV Series
Meanwhile, comparing the newly-released TV series to the ill-fated Vampire Academy movie, Plec revealed she didn’t watch the film while developing the show.
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“With complete respect to the filmmakers who made the movie, I took great umbrage with the company that decided to market it like Mean Girls with vampires. I mentally boycotted the movie as a fan of the books, so I never saw it,” she explained. “Once we decided to do the show, I chose to remain pure and not see where they succeeded or failed, so we could build the show the way we really wanted to.”
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