Gary Oldman co-writing Western vampire novel Blood Riders

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

More than twenty years after playing BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA in Francis Ford Coppola's version of the classic literary tale, actor Gary Oldman has decided to try his hand at writing some vampire prose himself.

Oldman and his manager Douglas Urbanski have closed a deal with Simon & Schuster/Atria Publishing's Emily Bestler Books to co-write a novel called Blood Riders, the first in a trilogy of stories that will follow a character named Magnus, who has been cursed by a vampire.

The authors are keeping story details to themselves for now, but Blood Riders is said to "reinvent the rules and realities of vampires and sex and the power of love" with its story of 

a mysterious man fleeing a curse in a town that the gold rush left behind.

As the mention of the gold rush implies, Blood Riders is a Western. As if the idea of Gary Oldman writing a horror novel wasn't already cool enough, they went and made it all the more appealing (to me, anyhow) by setting the story in the Old West.

The plan is for Blood Riders to reach bookstore shelves in the spring of 2016. There aren't currently any solid plans to bring the concept to television or adapt it into a film, as Oldman and Urbanski are putting all of their focus on making the book as good as possible.