Near Dark: A24 plotting a TV spinoff with Kathryn Bigelow?

Last week, I ran a video/ article about one of the greatest cuts flicks of the eighties – Big Trouble in Little China, and noted how this one-time box office bomb has arguably become one of the crown jewels in its new owner’s (Disney) library. Another movie that was a box office flop (just one year later) but also blew up into a major cult film was the vampire flick Near Dark. Now, it looks like A24 may be trying to launch a TV version, with noted scooper Jeff Sneider revealing the scoop in his newsletter, also revealing that its legendary director, Kathryn Bigelow, is involved in some capacity.

One thing that’s interesting to note about Near Dark is how obvious it was an influence on Twilight, with the premise notably similar, even if the execution could not have been more different. In the film, a young man named Cable (Adrian Pasdar) meets a drifter named Mae (Jenny Wright) with whom he becomes infatuated. It turns out, she’s part of a roving family of vampires who travel the country feeding and causing mayhem. Soon, he is inducted into their group, but seeks to escape once he realizes how psychotic they all are.

Lance Henriksen and Jenette Goldstein play the tribe’s patriarch and matriarch, while Bill Paxton utterly steals the film as the group’s most bloodthirsty member, a leather jacket-wearing hellraiser named Severen. The movie died in theaters, but became a home video hit and is now rightly regarded as a classic. It was Bigelow’s first major movie as a director (but not her debut), with her one of the rare female helmers to break into the action genre with her follow-ups, Blue Steel and Point Break.

A24 has been increasingly looking to get into the genre space on TV, with them also behind the Friday the 13th spin-off, Crystal Lake. Near Dark certainly has a ton of potential, as there’s a whole mythology that was teased in the film that’s never really been exploited. If Bigelow’s involved, the series could be something really special.

If you love Near Dark as much as we do, check out this tribute we did to it recently:

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