Judi Jordan Productions Acquires Rights To Don Sebastian Chronicles, Launches Development of Book One: The Black Castle
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES: Judi Jordan Productions has acquired rights to the 5-book historical vampire series The Don Sebastian Chronicles by American Author Les Daniels, Marvel, and DC Anthologist and Cult-Horror scribe. Development of book one, The Black Castle as an upcoming television series has begun on the internationally acclaimed dark fantasy novels.
The Black Castle is a television series about the other Spain. The Spain made by Jews, Moors and Gypsies who are often neglected in history books. The show was created and written by Judi Jordan with a diverse core production team in the U.S., Spain, India and Italy.
“This is an adult, historical vampire story where Christian Knight and noble Sebastian, and his Sephardic wife Ana use vampirism, alchemy and chivalry to defy the Spanish Inquisition. The show blends magic/alchemy, vampires, ghosts and historical characters who interact with the protagonists. Five books, five different countries bring chivalry, imagination and magic back. Don Sebastian represents a decent chivalrous character, a progressive knight for his time and a romantic intellectual” said Jordan in Los Angeles.
Show creator and writer Judi Jordan’s career began as a fashion designer in New York City where her collection sold to Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf’s among others. Marriage to a European entrepreneur took her to Switzerland, where she designed for the Haute Couture fabric house Jakob Schlaepfer in St Gallen. After this, she moved to Paris where she ran the Licensing Design for Balmain, designed accessories for Karl Lagerfeld’s Chloe, cocktail and Haute Couture for Louis Feraud. She had already begun writing, when Robert Altman optioned her screenplay in Cannes about a dysfunctional Hollywood marriage.
Returning to the U.S., Judi transitioned to entertainment via costume design for Showtime and indie films, and as an Entertainment editor/writer. Judi was a finalist for the AFI Women’s Directing Workshop twice and Finalist for the CBS Diversity Producers Mentorship Program.
While researching for a vampire screenplay work for hire, she discovered Les Daniels’ Historical Vampire books, The Don Sebastian Chronicles.
Jordan’s research included multiple trips to Spain, visits to castles, meetings with medieval scholars, research trips to Inquisition museums, armory museums, haunted chapels, mosques, the Alhambra, the Museum of Alchemy in Cordoba, and the ancient synagogue in Girona where Kabbala began. This deeply enriches and informs The Black Castle TV series for Season One and beyond.
The pilot was a finalist in several screenwriting contests including the Capital Fund Screenplay Competition.
Judi Jordan dedicates The Black Castle to the unsung cultures of Inquisition Spain, The Sephardic Jews, Indian Gitanos/Gypsies, Mystical Moors, and those brave Christians resisting the Inquisition, with the help of a very charismatic, chivalric Knight, Lord and Vampire, Don Sebastian.
American author Les Daniels penned five novels of the vampire Don Sebastian de La Villanueva, a Spanish nobleman whose predatory appetites pale into insignificance compared with the historical catastrophes which he witnesses in his periodic reincarnations. These include: the Spanish Inquisition in The Black Castle (1978); the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in The Silver Skull (1979); and the French Revolution's Reign of Terror in Citizen Vampire (1981). In the later novels Yellow Fog (1986, revised 1988) and No Blood Spilled (1991), Sebastian is resurrected in Victorian London and India, where the horror of his vampirism is again contrasted with non-supernatural evil, now in the person of Sebastian's human enemy, Reginald Callender.
Daniels also worked with the historical fiction genre. The Black Castle features appearances by Torquemada and Columbus; in The Silver Skull Sebastian confronts Hernán Cortés.In Daniels described his works as “tragedy, in which evil consumes itself, as opposed to the melodrama of most contemporary horror novels, in which customarily good guys meet bad guys and win in two out of three falls.”
Daniels was also the author of Comix: A History of Comic Books in America (Dutton, 1971) — with illustrations by the Mad Peck — and Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (1975).
The Black Castle is being produced by Judi Jordan Productions, Espada Entertainment, Co-Producer Pablo Barinaga, Associate Producer Annalisa G. Dunker.
