Look Who's Biting

After 17 years, the movie version of Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire may finally be rising from the turnaround grave. Director-of-the-moment Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) is scheduled to start shooting in Paris this summer for Geffen Films, and Brad Pitt (A River Runs Through It) is negotiating to play Louis, the vampire narrator. ''They seem to be hell-bent on getting it started, and I'm assuming they'll make it this time,'' says Rice, who has written scripts for three different producers since Interview's publication in 1976.

Could the recent success of Bram Stoker's Dracula (the Francis Ford Coppola film has earned $82.4 million) be what's getting this movie off the ground? The author says the reason's a little more cut and dried: ''If they don't start the principal photography by May, the contract runs out and the rights revert back to me.''

No one has been cast for the role of the vampire Lestat; a spokeswoman for Daniel Day-Lewis says the actor, recently said to be close to signing, won't commit because his schedule is overbooked. So who would Rice have as her antihero? ''Well, it was rumored for years that John Travolta would be the one,'' she says, ''but I always wanted Rutger Hauer — though that was many years ago, and he might be too old by now.''

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