{"id":689384,"date":"2026-06-07T07:26:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T07:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/689384\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T07:26:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T07:26:17","slug":"how-amc-is-marketing-the-vampire-lestat-concert-original-songs-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/689384\/","title":{"rendered":"How AMC Is Marketing The Vampire Lestat: Concert, Original Songs, More"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSam Reid<\/a> isn\u2019t a rock star, but he plays one on TV. Although, anyone who attended the June 2 premiere party for \u201cThe Vampire Lestat<\/a>\u201d at New York\u2019s Beacon Theatre could have sworn Reid was the real deal.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn full character as the show\u2019s vampire-turned-rocker Lestat de Lioncourt, Reid performed six original songs from the series composer Daniel Hart over the course of a 30-minute concert, moving with swagger and owning the stage just like a rock star would. \u201cIt was just a tremendous showcase of why he was the right person for the job,\u201d one attendee told Variety.<\/p>\n

\n\tAMC\u2019s \u201cInterview With the Vampire<\/a>\u201d has a new title and a new story for Season 3 \u2014 because it\u2019s now being based off \u201cThe Vampire Lestat,\u201d the second book in Anne Rice\u2019s vampire franchise. That\u2019s why the cabler is treating this as if it\u2019s an entirely new series launch \u2014 and in many ways, it is: \u201cThe Vampire Lestat,\u201d as the series has been renamed, has a different tone and focus as the action shifts to the character\u2019s transformation into a rock star.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s some of the best promotion I\u2019ve ever seen, and honestly necessary,\u201d that attendee said. \u201cThe tonal shift is shocking this season. Instead of downplaying it, they threw a freakin\u2019 rock concert and leaned in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat premiere event was the culmination of AMC\u2019s music-heavy marketing campaign meant to transition the show into its new form \u2014 and perhaps attract a few new fans along the way.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cInterview With the Vampire\u201d already had a solid fan base, but for those who didn\u2019t previously watch, AMC Global Media<\/a> chief marketing officer Kim Granito was realistic: \u201cPeople usually, by the time the third season of a show comes around, have decided already they\u2019re probably not going to try it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut, in the case of \u201cLestat,\u201d which premieres Sunday on AMC and AMC+, \u201cthis is an entirely new story told from an entirely different angle, from a story and a vibe perspective,\u201d she added. \u201cSo, giving it its own title and moment to relaunch the series felt like the right thing to do\u2026 If people potentially found Seasons 1 or 2, and it wasn\u2019t for them, this is an entirely new angle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cInterview With the Vampire\u201d also received additional sampling via Netflix, helping build more of an audience as they moved on to the new Season 3 era, she added.<\/p>\n

\n\tPart of the strategy was the idea of marketing Lestat as a real-world character and musician. The series has produced 20 songs, with five released so far on music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Via Lakeshore Records, AMC recently posted tracks including \u201cLong Face,\u201d \u201cAll Fall Down\u201d and a cover of Billy Idol\u2019s \u201cDancing With Myself.\u201d They all appear on \u201cVampire Lestat\u201d artist profile pages on various music services.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe tracks\u2019 performance on Spotify, and all the platforms that we\u2019re pushing them out on, has been really interesting thing to watch,\u201d Granito said. \u201cOn Spotify, so far it\u2019s up to about three and a half million streams, which, this is not a real rock star, so it\u2019s pretty impressive. Then, doing something in world and bringing this character to life felt like a no-brainer for us. So the Beacon was the perfect venue for it. When we announced that we were doing it, we posted the link for the tickets a couple of days later at midnight, and they sold out instantly. The company that manages the ticketing process for us told us it was \u2018K-Pop Demon Hunters\u2019-level of excitement and response.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tAMC also created a Rolling Stone cover, and \u2018The Vampire Lestat\u201d will get some primo space on the Sphere in Las Vegas. (It probably doesn\u2019t hurt that AMC and the Sphere are both in the Dolan family.) Through Amazon Music, the \u201cVampire Lestat\u201d will also appear on its Times Square billboard.<\/p>\n

\n\tOther partnerships through the season of \u201cThe Vampire Lestat\u201d include Pom Wonderful, Fender Musical Instruments Corp. and Spanish designer Palomo. Reid, as Lestat, will appear in Pom Wonderful spots, while Hart was playing a custom Fender Stratocaster at the recent Beacon Theatre concert.<\/p>\n

\n\tBeyond all that, AMC also hired famed rock photographer Frank Ockenfels 3 to shoot this season\u2019s key art.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHunter Ingram<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just about execution and where it shows up, it\u2019s about tone and vibe and staying true to what the audience wants, but also how would a rock star show up in the world,\u201d Granito said. \u201cOne of the things we really try to do, especially with the genre content we have, is not treat marketing as just straight promotion and really find on ramps for participation and experiential. What happened on Tuesday night was kind of the perfect execution of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Reid isn\u2019t a rock star, but he plays one on TV. Although, anyone who attended the June…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[299365,88,32822,299366,32823],"class_list":["post-689384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-amc-global-media","tag-entertainment","tag-interview-with-the-vampire","tag-sam-reid","tag-the-vampire-lestat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}