Variety is reporting that New Line Cinema has acquired feature film rights to White Wolf Publishing's role-playing game Vampire: The Requiem.  Requiem is the sequel to Vampire: The Masquerade, which spawned the Fox TV series Kindred: The Embraced, and which is at the center of a lawsuit between White Wolf and Sony Pictures over the film Underworld (see 'White Wolf & Nancy Collins Sue Sony').  White Wolf plans to release the Vampire: The Requiem hardcover along with its new expanded World of Darkness Rulebook in August (see 'White Wolf Grows All-New Fangs' and 'World of Darkness Rulebook Opens Up a Whole New Setting').

New Line, which has already scored a major success with its Marvel-based Blade series, sees Vampire: The Requiem as another potential vampire franchise.  White Wolf, which has had other properties notably Hunter: The Reckoning optioned by Hollywood studios, destroyed its original World of Darkness RPG world in the apocalyptic Time of Judgment series (see 'White Wolf Plans Destruction of Its RPG Universe'), and is just beginning the relaunch of The World of Darkness with the new WOD Rulebook and the Vampire: The Requiem supplement, which are due out next month.