People Are The New Vampires

Hollywood, CA

The film industry is having a rough week. Not only has the latest installment of the Twilight franchise, Eclipse, sold fewer than 7 tickets on its opening night, two studies published earlier this month confirm that vampire love is no longer de rigueur. When asked if they would let a lusty vampire man, born in the 19th century, impregnate them with a hellfoetus, an overwhelming 87% of respondents chose "Unlikely" or "Highly Unlikely". By comparison, when asked the same question last Summer, 93% of respondents chose "Highly Likely" or "In all three holes".

So shiny immortals will soon be gone forever from our silver screens; and yet it seems that the next "big thing" in movies is just around the corner. After several recent hits on the Times Bestsellers list featured prominently human characters, studios are betting that this wave of people popularity will soon hit the mainstream, with several anthropocentric flicks already in production.

The Expendables, on general release later this year, features a cast of persons displaying no significant vampiric or lycanthropic tendencies. "We believe audiences are eager to reconnect with the familiar story of a gang of renegade mercenaries who attempt to free a small country from the grasp of tyranny," said Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lions Gate, "none of whom are vampires."

Just Go With It, an Adam Sandler vehicle set for early 2011, has taken a similar path; "We thought about doing vampires, sure, but something told us that there were enough VamRomComs on the market." Sandler told Variety, "So we did this instead. You know," he continued "there are stories you can't tell with a vampire. Like, they can't go on a redemptive journey, because a vampire is an unholy abomination in the eyes of God."

Vampires are out, and people are in. Like zombies, gladiators and underage pregnancies, the blood-suckers have fallen from favour in the eyes of the fickle public. But what about mankind? How long before they too are extinguished from the celluloid zeitgeist? Alan Cliffe, CEO of Dover Demographics, believes his company have the answer; "People have two, three years tops. Then it's apes."