What would San Diego Comic-Con be without the presence of Anne Rice‘s Immortal Universe? Since AMC’s adaptation of the best-selling author’s Interview with the Vampire premiered its first season in 2022, the franchise has regularly haunted the halls of the San Diego Convention Center during the summer as it continued to expand with the launch of Mayfair Witches and Talamasca: The Secret Order. Now in year four, only two of those series remain, but both are going strong. The latter has Alexandra Daddario locked in to cast a spell over the network once more with Season 3 next year, while the former just wrapped its own third outing, now going under the name The Vampire Lestat in accordance with Rice’s sequel novel.
With an apocalyptic finale so fresh in everyone’s memories, stars Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, and Eric Bogosian joined showrunner Rolin Jones and executive producers Mark Johnson and Hannah Moscovitch for a panel to discuss how Louis (Anderson) and Lestat’s (Sam Reid) latest chapter came to a close. They also looked back at some highlights from the show’s unique event, The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only Live, where Reid took the stage in character for a rock concert full of original songs that Daniel Hart composed for the show. Season 3 of IWTV saw the titular immortal set the record straight from Daniel’s (Bogosian) book by starting a band and going on tour as a rock and roll god, making music a key piece of his rise to fame and power and of how his past catches up with him. It’s ultimately music, too, from Lestat’s grand concert that sets the stage for the return of the Queen of the Damned before the curtain is drawn.
Heading into SDCC, the series was still waiting for a Season 4 renewal to adapt Rice’s next IWTV novel. The Vampire Lestat is designed sort of as a first part of a larger story, with the next set to finally give Sheila Atim‘s Akasha a proper spotlight. A look at the ruins of Montreal after Lestat finishes narrating his Failures teases that a lot has happened since the concert, and a lot could change in the show’s future. Now, fans will no longer have to wait for an answer as to what comes next, as she is here. During the panel, it was confirmed that Interview with the Vampire would indeed return for a fourth run to follow up on that cliffhanger, taking on the new name Queen of the Damned in accordance with Rice’s book. Included with the announcement was a frightening new teaser of Akasha answering the call of the women of the world and beckoning them to rise up, declaring herself the answer to their woes.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
‘Interview with the Vampire’ Is Going Much Bigger With Season 4
Queen of the Damned will instead be showrun by Moscovitch instead of Jones, a fitting arrangement considering she wrote for Akasha in The Vampire Lestat. She’s been a pivotal part of IWTV‘s success so far, having also served as a writer on the first two seasons of the Immortal Universe series. In an official statement, Chief Content Officer of AMC Global Media and President of AMC Studios Dan McDermott expressed his confidence in the new season and how Moscovitch will address a world in peril after a rocking third run. “In The Vampire Lestat, Mark, Rolin, Hannah and this extraordinary cast delivered an unforgettable season filled with propulsive storytelling that captivated the passionate and engaged fans of this franchise,” he wrote. “We can’t wait to continue the journey with Queen of the Damned, one of the most iconic stories in Anne Rice’s mythology, and watch our established and beloved characters confront Akasha with their world, and ours, very much hanging in the balance.”
After two acclaimed seasons following Louis’ point of view, The Vampire Lestat continued to rock critics’ worlds, earning a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Collider’s Carly Lane gave it a 9/10 in her review, calling it “a decisively bold chapter that manages to be equal parts chaotic and poetic,” finding ways to feel like a natural continuation while also doing its own thing. With Season 4 now happening, the series is bound to undergo another shift for Queen of the Damned that Jones says is looking bigger and more supernatural than ever. In an interview with Lane after the finale, he teased new perspectives beyond the on-off vampire companions and a much wider scope, starting with the concert and the aftermath and molded around Akasha’s return.
“Look, the concert wasn’t there. There’s a bunch of stuff that happened off-screen this year that wasn’t there. People who know these books know The Queen of the Damned has chapters full of strict points of view, and that should be very clear. There were some things that were left out of Season 1 because there was a man on a microphone talking about his experience, and those tangential things that helped get you to that last image. But there are a bunch of things that were, for this year and going forward, about the laissez-faire of living here and now as vampires and having awoken something. The show’s about to get pretty big. In a show that is, generally speaking, dominated by male voices, there’s a new sheriff in town, and that will affect everything.”
There is no release date yet for Queen of the Damned, but for now, all episodes of The Vampire Lestat are streaming on AMC+. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the future of the series as further updates come out.
Release Date
June 7, 2026
Network
AMC
Writers
Jonathan Ceniceroz, Ryan Kattner, Anusree Roy, Hannah Moscovitch, Kevin Hanna, Rolin Jones
