True Blood

True Blood is an American television drama series created and produced by Alan Ball. It is based on the Sookie Stackhouse book series by Charlaine Harris. The show is broadcast on the premium cable network HBO in the United States. It is produced by HBO in association with Ball's production company, Your Face Goes Here Entertainment. It premiered on September 7, 2008. The show has been renewed for a second 12-episode season.

True Blood details the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional small Louisiana town. The series centers on Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a telepathic waitress at a bar, who falls in love with vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer).

The series has been critically acclaimed and won one Golden Globe and two Satellite Awards for its first season.

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' Sookie Stackhouse series, Dead Until Dark.

Ball was early for a dentist appointment one day when he was browsing through Barnes and Noble and came across the book. Enjoying it, he continued reading the series and halfway through the third entry, Club Dead, became interested in "bringing Harris' vision to television." Ball then contacted Harris about adapting the material and both thought that television was the ideal medium for the series. Ball has said, "The scope of Charlaine's books really lent itself to a series more than just a movie … [because I felt that condensing] it into two hours would do it a disservice." Additionally, Harris had previously been approached by others about adapting the books as a film, but declined due to creative differences. She agreed to go work with Ball, however, because she "became convinced that he understood the agenda of the books … and that he would do [them] justice."

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 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. Production on the series began later that fall, with Brook Kerr, who portrayed Tara Thornton in the original pilot, being replaced by Rutina Wesley. Two more episodes of the series had been filmed before the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike shut production of the 12-episode first season down until 2008.