The new trailer for the Vampire Academy series shows off just how different it is going to be from The Vampire Diaries. The series, which is set to premiere on Peacock on September 15, 2022, is based on the series of young adult novels of the same name by Richelle Mead. The property was originally adapted into live-action in the 2014 film flop led by Not Okay star Zoey Deutch. This new iteration will bring in a fresh new cast that includes Andrew Liner, Anita-Joy Uwajeh, Daniela Nieves, Jonetta Kaiser, Sisi Stringer, Rhian Blundell, Kieron Moore, Mia McKenna-Bruce, with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Angel star J. August Richards.
Vampire Academy is the newest series from Julie Plec, who co-created The Vampire Diaries with Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson and went on to create both of that series' spin-offs The Originals and Legacies. She has been working on Vampire Academy since Peacock picked it up in 2021, co-creating it with former The Vampire Diaries star and The Originals writer Marguerite MacIntyre, but in the meantime, Legacies was canceled by The CW when they took the ax to a huge swath of their series, effectively ending the Vampire Diaries universe after 13 years on the air. This might be a good thing for her new series, allowing it to breathe on its own without being compared to another currently airing Plec vampire series, but it also puts a lot of pressure on the new Vampire Academy to live up to the franchise it is succeeding.
Peacock just unleashed the brand-new trailer for Vampire Academy. In addition to introducing the titular St. Vladimir's Academy, it hones in on the show's two main characters, Royal Moroi vampire Lissa Dragomir (Nieves) and her Dhampir best friend and protector Rose Hathaway (Stringer). Scored to the strains of Billie Eilish's "You Should See Me in a Crown," it sets up some of the major dangers that will be facing the leads, including Strigoi attacks and the spontaneous development of what seems to be clairvoyant visions. Check out the trailer below:
Considering its similar background, also being a vampire series adapted from young adults novels and co-created by Plec, Vampire Academy hasn't been able to avoid comparisons to The Vampire Diaries ahead of its release. However, this trailer clearly proves that the new series is trying to strike a new path. In addition to the massive difference in setting (this show presents a supernatural world and its internal conflict rather than the supernatural intruding upon quiet suburbia), Vampire Academy also seems to prioritize royal intrigue and female friendship over romance and relationships, though that is still a subplot that the show includes with the character Christian, played by André Dae Kim of Degrassi: The Next Generation.
Whether or not Vampire Academy can maintain the kind of legacy that The Vampire Diaries did remains to be seen. While the original film was a failure, this might not be as much of a burden to the new series as it seems. If it is able to draw an audience, it will be able to tell its own story without fear of being compared negatively to the previous adaptation, which came out at a time that the Twlight series had just ended and perhaps audiences were not hungry for vampire material in the way the could be after all this time.
Source: Peacock