Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the first novel by Jeff Lindsay, was reviewed positively when it was released in 2004. As happens with such well-received and bestselling novels with high concepts, it was immediately optioned for the screen except at first, Dexter was planned to be a movie star, not the lead in a long-running TV show. Yes, that first book could have become a straight film adaptation. The only reason that producers shifted gears and envisioned it better as a TV series was because they thought that audiences would automatically assume it was just another slasher movie, and they had trouble finding financing as a result. There's another intrinsic movie connection to Dexter - the theme song composed by Daniel Licht was originally written as a part of the score for the film Necronomicon: Book Of Dead. So it looks like, even though they wanted to avoid such associations, Dexter wound up having some horror movie DNA in him after all.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
