The vampire genre is definitely not dead as news comes out that Ridley Scott's production company, Scott Free, together with Fox 2000 have bought the rights to a new vampire novel trilogy from writer Jordan Ainsley.

The Passage is the first novel in the series and has yet to be written, but showing how authors are rising in the world of publishing, based on a four hundred page partial manuscript, the three book series was bought by the publishers for US$3.75 million.

Although the Ridley Scott company is involved in the production, there's no word if Scott himself will be involved as yet. However the story, through Variety, might just attract his attention.

It tells of how a terminally ill cancer patient is cured after being bitten by bats in South America. Obviously the authorities are fascinated, and the Government begins testing humans, secretly of course, to find out if they can replicate the results. Unfortunately for the, they end up turning people into bloodsucking killing machines. Oh dear. Now the test subjects are running about and baring their teeth, and the first batch are death row inmates.

The story sounds like it will be deserving of a nice rating, it's promising to be bloody and violent, and if they keep to that we could be getting a great horror on our hands.