With the Twilight franchise coming to an end with the release of Breaking Dawn 2, the Hollywood Reporter takes a look at whether 2012 is the year the popularity of the vampire genre is ending.

From The Hollywood Reporter :

The past four years have been what you might call a bloodsucking boom period. When the film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight came out in 2008 and made $392.6 million worldwide, it spawned a boatload of vampiric entertainment, one that spanned genres and media. There was the rest of the Twilight saga, which has grossed a staggering $2.5 billion so far, with Breaking Dawn — Part 2 still to come in November. There were the TV shows, most of which were hits — such as HBO’s True Blood, The CW’s The Vampire Diaries, both the BBC and Syfy’s take on Being Human – and a few that weren’t (ABC’s The Gates and MTV’s Death Valley come to mind). And bookstore shelves remain stocked with hunky shirtless vampires glowering out from paperback covers.

But there also were a whole lot of misses: Dark Shadows, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Fright Night, Priest, Let Me In, Daybreakers, Vampires Suck, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant andDylan Dog. Some were good, some weren’t, but they all underwhelmed at the box office.

Back in 2009, Neil Gaiman — who knows a little bit about things that go bite in the night — said “vampires go in waves, and it kind of feels like now we’re finishing a vampire wave — at the point where they’re everywhere. It’s probably time to go back underground for another 20 or 25 years.” And that was three years ago; since then, that vampire wave has, officially, crashed.

After The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2comes out, there isn’t a ton of vampire stuff forthcoming: Neil Jordan’s Byzantium and Amy Heckerling’s Vamps are both in the can and will come out at some point … theoretically. The Vampire Diaries, Being Human and True Blood are still kicking on TV — though it’s a little telling that Blood creator Alan Ball has decided to leave the show he created, claiming that the series “had tired.”

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