Mark Johnson has produced some of the most distinctive movies and TV shows of the past 40 years. Think “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Rain Man,” “The Notebook,” “The Holdovers,” “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.”
Yet Johnson was a surprise choice by AMC Networks to lead its massive investment in building out the Anne Rice literary universe in multiple TV series. AMC bought the TV rights to Rice’s literary vault of Southern Gothic vampire tales in 2020.
Four years later, AMC has two successful Rice-based series on the air — “Interview With the Vampire” and “Mayfair Witches” — and a third hot prospect in development: “Talamasca,” which explores a mysterious society within the Rice universe. Johnson had little experience with the fantasy and horror genres. But he was the perfect person to steer the Rice initiative, in part because he’s not steeped in the conventions and tropes of fantasy fiction, according to Dan McDermott, president of entertainment for AMC Networks and president of AMC Studios. And he’s the type of old-school producer whose greatest skill is removing obstacles to getting the best work up on the screen.
“He’s indefatigable. He’s everywhere. He’s in Prague, he’s in New Orleans, he’s in Paris, he’s
in Dublin [for shooting],” McDermott says of Johnson. “That’s the difference between a good producer and a great producer. It’s somebody who is willing to be there to solve problems and facilitate the aspirations of the writers and the directors and the talent.”
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“Interview With the Vampire” was the first to be developed. Johnson knew it would set the tone for the shows to follow — even though each series is conceived as its own contained world. The shows at present are not engineered for crossovers or connecting storylines, though that may come down the road.
Johnson’s first task was to figure out the elements that made Rice’s stories stand out.
“The grounding of it all is stuff that is in all of us — those of us who feel we don’t quite belong, or we feel loneliness,” Johnson says. “So we have these vampires who are struggling. People love the vampire stuff, but they connect to these characters for different reasons.”
Esta Spalding, showrunner and exec producer of “Mayfair Witches,” says Rice’s themes have enduring resonance. In the same way that Rod Serling used allegory to explore complicated issues in “The Twilight Zone,” stories about other-worldly monsters allow us to explore aspects of ourselves.
“I love Anne’s conceit. I love the way she uses horror to explore the fate of powerful women and how they try to be in this world,” Spalding says. “There are very, very few dramas that have a single female lead who has darkness to her and is morally compromised. To write a show about that is really enticing.”
Spalding previously worked with Johnson on “Battle Creek,” the short-lived CBS drama from “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan. The support system that Johnson and his team at Gran Via Productions provide for showrunners is significant.
“He is absolutely for me the gut check. He has such impeccable taste,” Spalding says. “He’s brilliant about [pinpointing] what’s working about something you’re doing, or what’s not working.”
For “Interview,” Johnson tapped playwright and TV veteran Rolin Jones to serve as showrunner. Jones is known for delivering earthier material, but he loved the challenge of conjuring stories for viewers eager to sink their teeth into tales of the undead.
“It’s still a very bizarre thing to type the words: ‘And then he drains him.’” Jones says. “But at the center of [‘Interview’] is a 70-year-old guy talking to a 148-year-old guy. That was exciting to me.”
Just like the two existing series, “Talamasca” will have a dedicated showrunner if it is ordered to series. Spalding has subtly worked to find ways “to let there be delicious fun overlaps [among the shows] without feeling like the aesthetics of the shows have to line up. They’re all their own jewel boxes.”
These shows are meant to be pillars of AMC’s schedule that represent the breadth of Rice’s milieu – and the value of AMC’s investment in Rice’s literary estate.
When reading Rice’s works, “you can see what her preoccupations were at the time, both stylistic and thematic,” Johnson says. “The connections between the books are there, but they’re not easily realized,” Johnson says. “It’s sort of fun that each one of these shows so far is so different from the other.”
(Pictured top: AMC’s “Interview With the Vampire”)
