True Blood

About True Blood

True Blood is an American television series based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries books by Charlaine Harris and adapted for television by Alan Ball. The series is produced by HBO in association with Ball's own production company, Your Face Goes Here Entertainment.

The show details the fictional co-existence of vampires and humans in a small Louisiana town after Japanese-made synthetic blood becomes available for purchase. Anna Paquin stars as Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress at a diner who falls in love with one of the vampires, Bill Compton (portrayed by Stephen Moyer), integrated into her society.

Series creator Alan Ball had previously worked with premium cable channel HBO on Six Feet Under, which ran for five seasons. In October 2005, after Six Feet Under's finale, Ball signed a two-year agreement with HBO to develop and produce original programming for the network. True Blood became the first project under the deal, after Ball read the first book in Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampires Mysteries series "on impulse" and became interested in "bringing [Harris'] vision to television." The project's hour-long pilot was ordered concurrently with the finalization of the aforementioned development deal and was written, directed and produced by Ball. Cast members Paquin, Kwanten and Trammell were announced in February 2007 and Kerr and Moyer later on in April. The pilot was shot in the early summer of 2007 and was officially ordered to series in August, at which point Ball had already written several more episodes. Gary Calamar, the music director for the series, said he's working on a soundtrack for the show that is "swampy, bluesy and spooky" and that he plans to feature local Luisiana musicians. Calamar's work includes the sound for "Dexter," "Weeds" and "Entourage."