By my count, since 2001 there have been no less than 30 various movies, books, and TV seasons of (very popular) vampire-themed stories, to say nothing of the hordes of lesser books and direct-to-DVD movies.

• Southern Vampire Mysteries (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009)
• Blades 2 & 3 (2002, 2004)
• Underworld series, movies (2003, 2006, 2009)
• Van Helsing (2004)
• Night Watch series (2004, 2006, 2009)
• Twilight series, books (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008)
• Ultraviolet (2006)
• 30 Days of Night (2007)
• I Am Legend (2007)
• Let The Right One In (2008)
• Twilight series, movies (2008, 2009+)
• True Blood (2008, 2009+)

A dozen different plot lines, all with the same boring bloodline.  And on their heels, a new TV show (The Vampire Diaries - also based on a book series), book (The Strain - yet another trilogy), and movie (Daybreakers - with trilogy potential / likeliness, and bonus oil metaphor!).  All within a year, all their own separate new universes.  Great for the fang-bangers, but wasted space for those of us bored out of our skulls.

Between the endless faux-goths and massive preteen mobs, I can understand the demand for the genre, but I didn't realize how big a business vampirism entertainment really was.  From the list above, the movies alone grossed over $600,000,000 - so why not suck the bones dry, right?  I mean, Let The Right One In was really good, but it was in fucking Swedish.  Remake it in English now.  As much as the missus and I enjoy True Blood, it's opened her eyes to the fact that her previously beloved Twilight series is nothing more than a plot-by-plot rip-off of Harris' source material.

The frustrating part about this plague is how much creativity is being wasted on such tired material.  I'm not the biggest fan of horror, but I love science fiction and, to an extent, fantasy.  The vampire thing has the ability to straddle all three really well (I think that's why I find True Blood so entertaining).  Unfortunately, most vampire vehicles are too-simply driven either by a human killing vampires (mild successes), a vampire killing vampires (moderate successes), or a human-vampire love story (jackpot! see you at Hot Topic).

Strip out most of the fantasy elements and practically all of the sci-fi and you've essentially got zombies, which are apparently the new vampires.  Which makes sense, since I'm groaning like one right now.

Second verse, same as the first:

Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Shawn of the Dead. ...and then Dawn of the Dead again.  28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, 28 Months Later.  Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2, The Dead Are Still Rising, Hey Look More Dead Rising Again!, Are The Dead Still Rising?, The Rise & Fall Of The Dead, Dead Falling, and Dead Rising: Resurrection.  World War Z the book was turned like Blade, and now it's a movie.  Left 4 Dead 1, Left 4 Dead 2, and presumably Left 4 Dead 3 - but not Left 4 Dead 4 BECAUSE THAT'S TOO MANY FUCKING 4'S!!!  Resident Evils 1-18, and oh no 2009 isn't yet super-super-saturated, so why not Dead Snow, Zombieland, and Breathers.

It's a Sixth Sense situation: the poor genres don't know they're dead.  Can you imagine if someone like George Lucas did this to his fabled stories, constantly retreading the same ground, squeezing every last drop out of his creative?  Why you'd throw away your Yoda backpack and Indiana Jones whip, and start wearing all black, make-up, mumble melodrama like "life is pain", and form fake blood pacts in your parents' basement.

And then pre-purchase a dozen New Moon tickets four months in advance.

Update: I missed one.  Apparently CBS tried out a series last year called Moonlight, involving vampire detectives.  It failed, but they're discussing a movie anyway.  As much as I'd like to chalk this up as an indicator of the genres downward trend, it was probably just another standard CBS casualty: ignoring their viewer bases of octogenarians and "people who like to laugh".