The FX basic cable network is developing a new TV series based on Guillermo Del Toro’s The Strain.  Del Toro published The Strain, the first in a trilogy of novels in 2009 followed by The Fall in 2010 with the saga concluding in The Night Eternal in 2011.  Dark Horse Comics is currently in the process of adapting Del Toro’s narrative into a comic book series by writer David Lapham and artist Mike Huddleston, which has reached eight issues, and which would certainly stand to benefit if The Strain TV series gets the green light and is picked up by the network.

 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Strain creators Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan are close to a deal with Lost producer Carleton Cuse to develop The Strain as a TV series for FX. 

 

In The Strain, Del Toro and Hogan came up with an interesting and very different way of looking at vampirism.  The protagonist of the novels is a doctor who is investigating a vampire plague that is striking New York City.  The books treat vampirism as a parasitic disease and strip out all the layers of romanticism that have gradually clogged the arteries of modern vampire sagas.  Though it does have enough grisly elements to please modern horror movie fans, The Strain is as much a “medical thriller” as a traditional vampire story.  It should be interesting to see this rather novel take on the vampire genre will make it on TV where more conventional approaches to vampirism (True Blood) have found success.