Paramount Pictures first purchased the rights to Anne Rice's novel in April 1976, shortly before the book was even published, and the project languished in development hell for years before landing at Warner Bros.

Neil Jordan was approached to direct after the success of The Crying Game, and he agreed only on the condition that he could write his own screenplay, though he did not receive a writing credit.

Director Neil Jordan cited Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula as a key influence, wanting to bring the same epic, opulent, theatrical sense of darkness to vampire cinema.

Anne Rice originally wrote the screenplay with French actor Alain Delon in mind for Louis, and fans championed British actor Julian Sands for Lestat, but he was passed over for not being famous enough.

Before Tom Cruise was cast, the studio and Rice wanted Daniel Day-Lewis to play Lestat opposite Brad Pitt's Louis, but Day-Lewis turned it down because he didn't want to play a vampire.

Anne Rice publicly criticized the casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat, saying he was 'no more my vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler,' and suggested Cruise and Pitt should swap roles.

After seeing the finished film, Anne Rice reversed her opinion, calling Cruise's performance perfect and personally phoning him to apologize for doubting his casting.

At one point Rice rewrote Louis as a female character to heterosexualize his relationship with Lestat, believing this was the only way to get the film made given Hollywood's homophobia at the time; singer-actress Cher was considered for the reworked role.

Cher wrote a song called 'Lovers Forever' for the film's soundtrack, but it was rejected once Brad Pitt was cast instead of her; a dance-pop version later appeared on her 2013 album Closer to the Truth.

River Phoenix was originally cast as reporter Daniel Molloy, but he died four weeks before filming was due to begin; Christian Slater replaced him and donated his entire salary to charities favored by Phoenix, with the film dedicated to Phoenix after the end credits.

Ten-year-old Kirsten Dunst was the first actress tested for Claudia and impressed producers so much they feared it was 'too good to be true,' so they auditioned thousands of other girls, including Julia Stiles, before ultimately casting Dunst.

Filming took place in New Orleans, London, San Francisco, and Paris, with Louis' plantation being a combination of Destrehan Plantation and Oak Alley Plantation near New Orleans, and interiors built at Pinewood Studios by production designer Dante Ferretti.

Brad Pitt admitted in a 2011 interview that he was miserable during filming and even tried to buy himself out of his contract, describing the shoot as 'six months in the f—ing dark' due to near-exclusive night shoots during a London winter.

Makeup effects supervisor Stan Winston developed a technique of stenciling translucent blue veins onto the actors' faces, which required them to hang upside down for 30 minutes so blood would rush to their heads and make the veins protrude for tracing.

The scene of Claudia cutting Lestat's throat was achieved by transitioning from Tom Cruise with a bleeding prosthetic wound to an animatronic model designed to visibly wither as it drained, enhanced with CGI blood.

For the charred remains of Claudia and Madeleine, Stan Winston sculpted the model using archival photographs of Hiroshima bombing victims as reference.

A test screening led producer David Geffen to have about 20 minutes of footage cut or rearranged after audiences felt there was too much blood and violence, despite director Neil Jordan's objection to holding the preview before he'd finished trimming the film himself.

The film opened with $36.4 million, breaking the November box office record at the time and becoming the biggest R-rated opening weekend ever, a record it held until 1997's Air Force One.

Oprah Winfrey walked out of an advance screening after only ten minutes due to the film's gore and dark themes, and considered canceling a planned interview with Tom Cruise promoting the movie.

The film's score by Elliot Goldenthal opens with a rewritten version of the Catholic hymn Libera Me, changing the line 'de morte æterna' (from eternal death) to 'de vita æterna' (from eternal life) to reflect Louis' character.

Guns N' Roses recorded a cover of 'Sympathy for the Devil' for the end credits, which turned out to be the band's last major release before Slash and Duff McKagan departed.