I visited the set of Universal’s Cirque du Freak last year. But now I can no longer say that. Now I must say I visited the set of The Vampire’s Assistant.
Universal has changed the name of the adaptation of Darren Shan’s young adult novels, ditching the Frenchy sounding title for one that might play better in today’s undead-loving landscape. The name change isn’t completely out of left field; the second book in the Cirque du Freak series is actually called The Vampire’s Assistant, and I do believe that the movie contains elements of multiple books.
John C Reilly plays the titular vampire; when I visited the incredibly hot and muggy set he looked quite weird in orange hair and vampire get-up. I can’t wait to see what this film looks like, and it seems that I won’t have to wait so long; besides changing the title, Universal has also bumped the release date up from January 2010 to October 23rd, the better to hit the Halloween audience.