According to The Hollywood Reporter and literary agent Joshua Bilmes, Anna Paquin has been cast as Sookie Stackhouse in the upcoming series based on the books by Charlaine Harris. The HBO series, True Blood, is being written, directed, and executive produced by Alan Ball. The series takes place in a world in which vampires can buy Japanese-made synthetic blood. Their arrival in a small Louisiana town is not easy, and a love story develops between a vampire and Sookie Stackhouse, an innocent waitress who can read people’s minds.
24-year-old Paquin won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 1993’s The Piano. She also played Rogue in the three X-Men movies. This will be her first ongoing television role.
Two other major roles have been cast: Ryan Kwanten as Sookie’s brother Jason, and Sam Trammell as bar-owner Sam Merlotte.
The seventh book in Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series, All Together Dead, will be published in May in hardcover. The mass market edition of sixth book in the series, Definitely Dead, will be published 27 March with a 104,000-copy first printing. The series has also been published in Brazil, China, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, Korea, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the UK.
[Edited 10 August 2007 with this article about HBO picking up the series.]