Colin Wilson’s ‘The Space Vampires’ to Be Adapted as a TV Series

Deadline Hollywood is reporting that a Beverly Hills company called Ringleader Studios has acquired the rights to the 1976 Colin Wilson “The Space Vampires” with a goal of adapting it into a TV series.

The novel told the story of how a crew of Earth astronauts found three space aliens in suspended animation in a derelict space ship. They bring the aliens back to Earth and find, to their horror, that they are vampires of a kind. But instead of sucking out peoples’ blood, they suck out their life force in order to survive. Death and mayhem ensue in late 21st Century London.

“The Space Vampires” was adapted into a movie entitled Lifeforce directed by Tope Hooper and starring Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, and a pre Star Trek Patrick Stewart. The movie version is set in the 1980s, though with interplanetary travel, and involves an expedition to visit Halley’s Comet, at the time passing close to the Earth. While the “space vampires” still suck life force rather than blood, their depiction is evocative of more traditional vampires. For instance, they can be killed with a leaded iron shaft through the “energy center” just below the heart. Also victims of the “space vampires” can become energy vampires themselves.

Besides a TV series, the book will be adapted into a graphic novel, a video game, and other associated media. It is unknown at this time whether the TV version will follow more closely the novel or the movie.

Colin Wilson is a prolific writer of a number of genres, including science fiction, detective stories, and nonfiction of various stripes. He also has the reputation of a philosopher, a literary critic, and a rebel since the late 1950s. His first book was a treatise on the relationship between alienation and the creative process called “The Outsider” first published in 1956.