From his debut with 1997’s darkly hilarious House of Yes to the…whatever Mr. Popper’s Penguins was, it’s almost impossible to gauge where director Mark Waters’ career is going to take him next. But if there is a detectable pattern to be found, it’s that his films usually contain very strong female performances. (Certainly with Mean Girls, but not so much for Mr. Popper.) Hopefully that’s the case with his upcoming adaptation of Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters, a film that just added another star-in-the-making to its cast. I mean, she has to be better than the title of this movie, right?
Former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko is set to star in Vampire Academy, which is adapted from the hugely successful young adult vampire series authored by Richelle Mead. This will just be another boost of popularity for the Ukrainian actress, who has had a monumental last year, co-starring in the hilarious Seven Psychopaths, Starz’s series Magic City, a Terrance Malick movie, and Philipp Stölzl’s feature debut Erased. Oh, and she’s opposite Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman in Oblivion. So I don’t think her performance in this film is going to hurt its box office.
Oddly enough, Deadline reports she’ll take the role of Kirova, the headmistress of the Academy where mental and spiritual besties Rose Hathaway (Zoey Deutch) and Lissa (Lucy Fry) attend school. Assuming this follows the trajectory of the first book, we’ll see Rose and instructor Dimitri (Danila Kozlovski) having a secret romance, and the ongoing unfriendliness with the Strigoi, the bad vampires. So Kirova doesn’t seem like it’ll be a particularly meaty role for Kurylenko to gnaw on, but perhaps screenwriter Daniel Waters flipped things up a bit.
Filming should begin in late May, and Vampire Academy will be put in theaters by for The Weinstein Co. sometime in 2014.
