"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"

It's Halloweekend, and you know what that means: We are officially at peak vampire saturation. They're borderline inescapable in October, from Tame Impala's new single "Dracula" taking over TikTok to the endless parade of Sinners costumes dotting parties across the country. This year, even Broadway is getting into the spirit, as everyone gears up for the premiere of The Lost Boys at the Palace Theatre in 2026.

The Lost Boys is poised to break a Broadway cycle some prognosticators considered immortal: Historically, vampire musicals have not fared well on the Main Stem. It's a perplexing trend, as inarguably the most famous vampire performance of all time, Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula, originated on Broadway in 1927. 

The nefarious Count Dracula is actually a relatively safe bet for playwrights. In addition to the 1927 play (which returned to Broadway in 1931 and 1937, and was revived to immense acclaim in 1977 with Frank Langella, David Dukes, Raul Julia, and Jean LeClerc), other stage adaptations by Steven Dietz, Kate Hamill, and Ted Tiller have received significant acclaim as regional theatre circuit favorites. Broader adaptations, such as Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors and Drunk Dracula, are verifiable hits Off-Broadway, with large regional lives. 

Why, then, has there never been a successful vampire musical on Broadway? Let's break it down.

The first vampire musical to play Broadway was one of the most infamous misfires in Broadway history. Dance of the Vampires, an adaptation of Roman Polanski's 1967 spoof film The Fearless Vampire Killers, is one of the most perplexing flops of all time.

Premiering in Vienna in 1997 as Tanz der Vampire, the musical was a smash hit in Europe. Featuring a score by the master of the power ballad, Jim Steinman, the Austrian production starred The Phantom of the Opera's original Raoul, Steve Barton, as the darkly alluring Count Krolock in a production that emphasized the shadowed beauty of gothic romance in all its excess. 

When the time came to bring it to Broadway in 2002, however, just about everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. With Polanski unable to come to the U.S. due to his being a fugitive sex offender, a leadership vacuum led to the production undergoing a transformation so ludicrous it could fill an entire book. To keep it brief: What began as a dark romance à la The Phantom of the Opera was transformed into a slapstick Mel Brooks comedy; Barton was ousted in favor of another Phantom alum, Michael Crawford; and the musical's English-language book took on a distinctly misogynistic and homophobic veneer.

Instead of a lush night out, the musical was turned into the evening from hell. Though there was one moment of theatrical brilliance: Mandy Gonzalez (in her Broadway debut) brought down the house, night after night, with her rendition of "Total Eclipse of the Heart." The Steinman ballad, which he had originally written for an abandoned adaptation of the silent vampire film Nosferatu, would elicit giggles from the audience at the beginning, but by the end of the number, audiences was firmly in the palm of Gonzalez's hand. 

Unfortunately, one incredible performance does not a production make. Following 61 previews and 56 regular performances, Dance of the Vampires closed on Broadway at a $12 million loss, one of the largest in Broadway history. It did fare better in the after life; Tanz der Vampire continues to run to sold-out crowds in Europe.

But hey, maybe it was a fluke. Perhaps it is simply comedy vampire musicals that don't land well with Broadway audience. Let's go back to source material we know works: Bram Stoker's Dracula, the gothic romance aesthetic, and one of the most critically divisive composers of the late 20th century.

In 2004, composer Frank Wildhorn, best known for Jekyll & Hyde, got his fangs into Dracula the Musical. On paper he was a perfect fit: With an unrelenting taste for classic literature adaptations and wicked protagonists, Dracula should have been in his wheelhouse. Unfortunately, likely due in part to his concurrent divorce from his muse Linda Eder, Wildhorn was not at his best, and it showed throughout Dracula's score.

While director Des McAnuff did his best to overshadow the structural problems with swaths of cloth draped over everything that didn't move, cranked up sound design, and even a memorable nude scene for stars Kelli O'Hara and Melissa Errico, word of mouth staked Dracula on arrival. One particular lyric, “Give me your mouth upon my mouth / Give me your skin to savor / Give me your breath upon my breast / Taste our immortal flavor," made New York magazine list of "songs to make your blood curdle."

As Ben Brantley put it in his review for the New York Times, “And here it is, looming like a giant stuffed bat on a stick, the easiest target on Broadway.” Dracula lost $7.5 million before shutting down within five months of its August 2004 Broadway opening. Since then, however, a heavily revised version of the musical has found robust life in Europe and Asia, proving to be a popular October programming option with various JPOP and KPOP stars donning the Count's cape. 

So what was the Broadway community to do following two of the largest box office losses in history? How about immediately going for the triple crown, bound to draw comparisons, without giving audiences so much as a season to catch their breath?

Lestat, by every isolated metric, should have worked. Based on the immensely popular Vampire Chronicles series by Anne Rice, the musical reunited the legendary Elton John with his most popular songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, for what would be their only theatrical venture together. During its out-of-town tryout, it was the highest-earning pre-Broadway production in San Francisco history (beating out Wicked and Cats). Hugh Panaro and Carolee Carmello, the production's stars, received particularly warm notices from Rice fans, who were almost immediately attached to their portrayals of Lestat de Lioncourt and his mother, Gabrielle.

Unfortunately, this robust vote of fan confidence on the West Coast was not echoed by the production's producers. Without John's knowledge, the show was dramatically reworked before its Broadway bow, truncating much of the tale John had composed for in favor of emphasizing the musical's connection to the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire. By the time Lestat reached Broadway in 2005, it had effectively died on the surgical table, with too many executive hands trapped in its chest cavity. It barely lasted a month.

While the musical brought in two Tony nominations, for Carmello and costume designer Susan Hilferty, John was so humiliated by the experience that he blocked the release of the musical's recorded cast album, essentially dooming it to life in the shadows. In spite of 20 years of fans begging him to release the record (including several public pleas from Carmello), John has remained unmoved: Lestat will have no further life, unless it is revived in the form he originally wrote it. Only time will tell if this vampire musical will one day be reborn. But for now, it languishes as one of the greatest what if's of Broadway's 21st century so far.

Which takes us now to The Lost Boys.

It has been 20 years since a vampire musical played Broadway, and in those intervening decades, a whole lot has changed in pop culture. We have lived through two major vampire media renaissances, first with Twilight and True Blood, and now with Sinners and Interview with the Vampire on AMC. Stage effects have evolved immensely, making it increasingly possible to make fantasy manifest before our very eyes. And, perhaps most importantly, Broadway audiences are skewing younger and younger, with appetites for more youthful stories, and shows that veer in the genre fiction territory—horror, fantasy, and science fiction have risen in popularity. The Lost Boys, with its teenage characters and coming-of-age storyline, fits well in a Broadway landscape where shows like The Outsiders and Stranger Things: The First Shadow are a hit with audiences.

As it currently stands, The Lost Boys appears to have learned from its predecessors' mistakes: They have a rock-solid leader with a clear vision in the form of Tony-winning director Michael Arden, the snippets of the show's score (by band The Rescues) appears to be sonically rich and lyrically sound, and based on their panel at Comic Con, the story appears to be inspired (but not subsumed) by the 1987 Lost Boys film. Plus there's so far a lack of behind-the-scenes drama that can threaten to derail the show.

If The Lost Boys play their cards right, they may just break the so-called vampiric curse that descended on Broadway in the early 2000s. We're certainly hoping for a happy ending.