AMC’s ‘NOS4A2’ Trailer Features A Unique Take On The Conventional Vampire Story

Following in the footsteps of his father, Stephen King, author Joe Hill will have one of his books turned into an AMC series, which sees a completely different take on the usual vampire story that audiences are used to. The series, NOS4A2, has dropped a new trailer on AMC’s YouTube page, putting a new spin on some very familiar concepts.

In 2013, Joe Hill wrote a unique book that featured Charlie Manx, a Vampire-like antagonist, who abducted children and fed off of their souls to stay immortal. The book didn’t use the conventional mythology of vampires, but instead created new concepts and blended many sci-fi or supernatural concepts into a different type of horror story, as reviewed by The New York Times. The book was critically well-received and is now set to be adapted into a new series by AMC, best known for The Walking Dead.

The TV adaptation seems to follow the events of the book pretty closely. The protagonist of the story is a young girl, Vic (Ashleigh Cummings), who is able to find lost things through some remarkable powers of her own. Being able to create portals to find those lost things, the character eventually discovers her connection to Manx, played by Zachary Quinto, and vows to stop him at all costs, as per the trailer. The series seems like it will be about Vic trying to stop Manx, and their ongoing enmity, as seen by the different ages that Quinto seems to play in the trailer.

When discussing the show, showrunner Jami O’Brien describes the series and the tone that audiences can expect, as per The Wrap.

“It’s kind of a fun twist on the vampire genre. Charlie Manx is a kind of vampire but he’s not any kind of vampire that we’ve seen before. He doesn’t suck blood, he sucks souls. It’s a little irreverent and I’m glad that we have it because I think it’s a lot of fun.”

The title of the show, NOS4A2, is based on the license plate of the car that Manx drives, using it to abduct children. When pronounced, it sounds very much like Nosferatu, the classic vampire movie by F. W. Murnau. O’Brien claims that the show will feature plenty of wordplay and cultural references, which lend to the fun vibe of the series, despite its setting in the horror genre.

Even author Joe Hill reflects this sentiment through references to other works in his novel and his connection to his father, as he mentions in a separate interview, as covered by Wired.

“At a certain point, working on NOS4A2, I thought, maybe I’d like to have fun with it. Instead of shying away from it and avoiding it like a dangerous infection, maybe it would be fun to goof on Stephen King a bit.”

NOS4A2 premieres on AMC on June 2.