Vampire Academy ethused fansites Pagetopremiere.com , YAHollywood, That’s Normal, Fangirlish.com, and Hypable got a chance to chat over the phone with director Mark Waters on how he got involved in the next YA novel turned film, Vampire Academy, and the journey he took in bringing the book to life.
We’re all very excited about Vampire Academy. There are so many YA movies coming out and there’s the pressure of succeeding or failing. What attracted you to Vampire Academy and what made you put your belief into this project?
It was weird, but I kind of came into it through my brother. My brother was approached to write the screenplay and when he started to talk about the story and talk about this lead character of Rose and the interesting connection he had with Lissa, I found myself getting intrigued. Then, the producer separately came to me and sent me the books and when I read the books I realized, well quite frankly I read a lot of YA fiction myself anyway and when I read Vampire Academy, I was very struck that I liked this lead character. She wasn’t an innocent. Most of the time when you meet these people, they don’t know anything about the supernatural world and they are brought into this world and you learn about it through their eyes. They are basically these virginal innocents and I loved the fact that Rose wasn’t that. Rose was somebody who was already deeply embedded in the world and wasn’t a sweet, naïve, or shy creature. If anything, she was somebody who was rambunctious and pertinent, funny, subversive, and I liked everything about that energy. My brother’s screenplay frankly was the thing that put me over the edge. He was able to stay very loyal to the books, but make something the even amped up the humor and wit that is already there in Richelle’s book. I think he took it and put it on steroids. That also got me very excited by it.