Spider-Man: No Way Home star Jacob Batalon has shone in a supporting role in the MCU, but now he's going to get the chance to carry his own series. Known for playing Peter Parker's best friend Ned in the latest rebooted versions of the Spider-Man movies, he'll be headlining the Syfy channel series Reginald the Vampire.
The new Syfy show will be based on the Fat Vampire book series, with the Spider-Man: No Way Home star stepping into the titular role. The program will be an hour-long dramedy based on a series of fictional stories written by Johnny B. Truant. The show has been picked up straight to series with a 10-episode order.
The Hollywood Reporter says the show will revolve around Batalon's character, who is an unlikely hero at the center of all the action. In the books, Reginald finds himself in a world that is populated by fit, trim, and beautiful vampires. The Spider-Man: No Way Home star will then have to navigate a number of different obstacles as Reginald. There will be a girl he loves but can't have, a manager at the place he works who is not a fan, and the chief of the local vampire tribe that wants Reginald dead.
The first installment of the series of Fat Vampire books was published in 2012 and has been popular ever since with young adult readers. The debut novel was followed by five others so far in Tastes Like Chicken, All You Can Eat, Harder Better Fatter Stronger, Fatpocalypse and Survival of the Fattest. In fact, The books were so popular that it led to a three-book offshoot, The Vampire Maurice.
For his part, Batalon has been a mainstay in the Spider-Man series ever since Tom Holland took over the titular role in that franchise. The Ned Leeds character is entirely new to a film franchise that is on its third reboot after the original movie trilogy had Tobey Maguire playing Peter Parker and then Andrew Garfield took on the role in two movies in the first restart.
Maguire and Garfield's movies all focused predominantly on Parker's post-high-school life while Holland's version of Parker has been high-school-aged for each of his two films. That has allowed Batalon's Ned to play prominently as the beloved sidekick and he will be reprising that role in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Just what he and Holland, as well as the rest of the cast, will be doing in that movie is still largely under wraps.
Reginald the Vampire does not yet have a release date, but Spider-Man: No Way Home debuts in theaters on December 17, 2021.
Source: Hollywood Reporter