from Joseph McCabe at FearNet: ‘Daybreakers’ Directors on Making Vamps Nasty Again
Australian filmmakers Michael and Peter Spierig may soon win the thanks of old-school vampire fans everywhere — for taking the undead, at least on screen, back to their proper satanic roots with Daybreakers. (In the wake of Twilight, Vampire Diaries, and True Blood this is no mean feat.) I was one of the first online journos lucky enough to chat with the Spierig brothers upon completion of their new epic, way back in October of ’07. Hit the jump to read the conversation we had, and decide if you think Daybreakers is worth checking out when it, at long last, opens this Friday, January 8.
Vampires are hot again right now, but you’ve been working on Daybreakers for some time. What sparked the project?
Peter: It’s a genre that we certainly love. When we came up with the concept it wasn’t so much that we wanted to do a vampire movie. We just liked the story, and it just so happened that there were vampires. There are certain parallels that you can make between vampirism and certain things that are going on today. We kind of liked that concept, too. And while our film has some of that, it’s ultimately about making something that’s entertaining and fun. We just thought it was a really cool idea, and kept developing it. It’s very different to any vampire film that’s out there.
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By Meredith Woerner at io9: Daybreakers Directors Working On A Mysterious 1940s Alt-History
One thing the Daybreakers directors love, and excel at, is world-building. And we’ve got the exclusive update on the new worlds they’re building, including Warner Bros.’ space-pirate reboot of Captain Blood, and another mysterious 1940s alternate-history film.
While chatting about the vampire world the Spierig brothers created, they shared updates on their next two in-the-works science fiction films, including the scoop on a fascinating new project set in an alternate history during the 1940s.
Michael Spierig: We’re working on Captain Blood, at the moment. And that’s Captain Blood, the original Errol Flynn pirate movie. We’re taking that and turning it into a space pirate movie.
Are you guys going to do for Captain Blood what you did with Daybreakers and spend a ton of time world-building?
Peter Spierig : Yes, there’s a lot of that. In science fiction, you have to understand how it all works. We’ve been writing a script for a year now that’s another science-fiction film as well. It’s a period film it’s set largely in the 40s. We’ve spent a lot of time researching, just an enormous amount of time. We’ve almost over-researched, we probably need to put some of the research away and get out of the script for a moment.
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by Patrick Lee at Sci Fi Wire: Will District 9‘s sequel be a prequel instead?
Last July, we posted about District 9 director Neill Blomkamp’s plans for a sequel to his hit movie, for which he just got nominated for a Producers Guild Award.
This week, he elaborated a bit on his plans for a follow-up—which might be a prequel instead, but definitely not a TV show—to the Los Angeles Times’ Hero Complex blog:
“A television show I wouldn’t really want to do. That would be…well, I just don’t want to do that. But a sequel might be interesting. I know what I’m doing next so it wouldn’t be right away. But the concept of aliens in Johannesburg is such an appealing idea to me and the issues of race and how they meet. All of the things that I had going on with it. I wouldn’t mind messing around with it again.”
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from Stuart Levine at Variety: FX buys rights to ‘Avatar’
FX has landed bigscreen’s biggest fish, acquiring the basic cable rights to James Cameron’s “Avatar.”
Terms of the FX deal weren’t disclosed, but it looks to be more than the standard pact, with FX laying out an estimated $25 million-$30 million. That’s a bit higher than other recent bigscreen purchases, but due to the nature of the movie’s global gross and demand from other networks, Fox was able to get a substantial increase.
Cabler can begin airing “Avatar” toward the middle of 2012 and will likely have a window that extends toward the end of the decade. Most deals last four years, but negotiations allowed for an extended window.
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via Reelz Channel: The Book of Eli Gives a Nod to Its Predecessors
As a post-apocalyptic western, The Book of Eli clearly has a lot of cinematic influences. Although its filmmakers are taking pains to make sure it doesn’t get pigeonholed as a western genre piece, they have been quite upfront about how much they were inspired by the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood series of spaghetti westerns.
In a recent interview with Sci Fi Wire, co-director Albert Hughes also acknowledged some of Eli‘s more apocalyptic influences. One that he points to in particular is the 1975 cult classic A Boy and His Dog. A couple of explicit nods to this dystopian forerunner were even included in the movie itself. In the background of one of the scenes is a wall poster for A Boy and His Dog, and in one shootout sequence a rooftop sniper is packing the exact gun that Don Johnson used in that movie.
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I can’t wait to see Daybreakers and Book of Eli. They look amazing. I think a District 9 prequel could be really cool, I’d love to see why the aliens stopped here. I’d rather see that then the aliens returning. And FX has been buying up a lot of big movies lately-first Twilight and now Avatar. It’s an improvement over corny 80’s action movies anyway.
What would you like to see in a District 9 prequel? What do you think about Space Captain Blood?
