Exclusive Interview: Underworld Awakening

Posted by Charmaine Blake on Jan 20th, 2012 in Action Adventure, Fantasy, Horror, New Releases | 0 comments

Exclusive Interview: Underworld Awakening

Underworld Awakening is creating a huge commotion from movie fans all over the world who love fantasy movies of this genre and are awaiting Kate Beckinsale‘s return as Selene. It seems that there is a lot of mystery when it comes to this new installation. Underworld Awakening seems to be threading silently as it debuts this January 20th 2012. For all the fans of the previous Underworld films, here is an exclusive interview from the directors of Underworld Awakening: Bjorn Stein and Mans Marlind

“Underworld Awakening’s release is almost upon us, however, bringing with it Kate Beckinsale, a slew of new characters and more vampires versus Lycan mayhem. And orchestrating it all this time is a pair of directors hailing from Sweden.
Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein made their feature debut with 2005′s Storm. They followed that with the thriller Shelter, still unreleased in the U.S. and starring Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Underworld Awakening (opening January 20) is their biggest feat yet and Shock recently spoke with them about the experience and about their desire to make this the most kinetic, monster-filled Underworld entry yet.
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The cat is out of the bag in this film, the “underworld” seems to be non-existent this time, seeing as the humans now know of this underground movement of vampires and Lycans. So, how does this film stay true to the universe and what we’ve come to expect?

Mans Marlind: We’re trying to keep it Underworld in tone. Once we started working on it, it was like you didn’t want to stray too far from all of that because then it will just become another movie. You want to have the Underworld feel. Yes, the story picks up 12 years [after Evolution], but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be this futuristic thing, it’s just 12 years later and now you have the humans involved in this comic book world. We were always pushing ourselves to not do something you’ve seen before in the previous films. We have daylight scenes, which is difficult because there haven’t really been any before. How do we treat daylight? Stuff like that is fun to do.

Bjorn Stein: One of the things we felt we could change was the locations and change some other elements, but the tone has to be the same. The tone of Underworld is that it takes itself kind of seriously. You’ve got betrayal and other themes…Selene is being hunted. The first script we read had a lot of stuff we liked but the tone was totally off. There was a bit of humor in it and Underworld shouldn’t have that. The seriousness of it works because there’s so much cool shit in it like the gizmos, the weaponry and the fight sequences. All of that makes it impressive.

That said, are we going to get some new weaponry and new creatures in this installment?

Marlind: Say you have a favorite band and there’s a new album coming out. You want it to sound the same, because you like them, but if they sound too much the same, you’ll think they’re boring. It’s the same thing here. We still want people to recognize what they like, because they came to see an Underworld movie, but here we’ve got Kate back. Kate is Underworld. That was one of the things we felt was important, so everything else we could play around with. We changed the classical gothic style, the Eastern European feel, to something neo-gothic because we have the element of “man” involved this time. We put many more creatures in here; we needed to show a different kind of Lycans. One of the things we worked the hardest on is delivering hard-hitting action. We wanted to start tough and keep pounding away until the end of the first reel, which is 13 minutes later.

During development, was Michael (Scott Speedman) in the fold of the story or was he always absent?

Stein: Yes, there’s a mystery and we read about it on the Internet all of the time and we’re very happy. [laughs] And it will remain a mystery. “

You can read the rest of the interview at Shock Till You Drop.

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Charmaine Blake loves movies, musical theater listening to music and taking pictures of anything that she finds interesting. She is a voracious reader and writer, and enjoys her time writing for New Movie Launches. Charmaine loves spending time with her pets and currently has a Siberian Husky, a toy poodle and a cat.