The story is set in 2019, a dystopian future Earth which has been ravaged by a living plague that turns the human population into vampires. The story follows a rebel group among the vampires, blood-suckers who want a return to the human condition. If the story isn’t enough to snare you, take a look at the cast: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill all star. Peep the new poster, revealed exclusively on MTV.com.

Source: mtv.com (click to view poster)

While I wasn’t sure what to expect going in, I was surprised by how much I liked the movie. It’s a high concept film that also plays as a vampire movie. I think audiences are going to like it when Lionsgate releases it this January. Anyway, while at the festival, I got to interview The Spierig Brothers and you can read our conversation after the jump. They talk about doing some of the special effects themselves, getting financing, making the film, and they also talk about their next movie “Captain Blood”.

Finally, here’s a review of “Daybreakers”, here’s the trailer, and here is a recent video blog where I talk about the film. You can expect a lot more on this film as it get’s closer to release.

Question: You guys had a very successful first film. How hard was it to get the financing and to get this movie off the ground?

MICHAEL SPIERIG: “Undead”, while it was successful, it wasn’t a phenomenal success, it was sort of a success if you talk about it in cult terms. So it wasn’t like people were kicking our door down saying you must work with us, you must work with us. What we ended up doing is we wrote this treatment and we took it to Lionsgate who released “Undead” and we said here’s this idea for this vampire film. They really liked the treatment and from that they paid us to write the script. And we did that with them for the better part of 2 years developing the script. And then this is a long process of raising the money, rewriting the script and then eventually going out to a cast member, which was Ethan Hawke. And once we got Ethan on board, it changed everything. It legitimized the project. It secured the last pieces of our financing and it allowed us to go out and get the other actors that we wanted which was Willem Defoe and Sam Neill.

When you guys were developing this project, many filmmakers work on like 4 or 5 things that they attach themselves to to possibly whichever one bubbles up, that’s the one they end up going for. Were you guys writing other things at the same time or was this all the eggs in the basket?

MICHAEL: This was all the eggs.

PETER SPIERIG: It was one of those things where we were offered a lot of scripts but they were the 5th sequel in some sort of straight to video horror thing, you know? It was that type of stuff and there was…we just weren’t interested in doing that. And we just figured the only way we’re going to get to make the type of movie we want to make is if we write it ourselves. And we put everything into “Daybreakers” and had no other things going. And if it didn’t work, if for whatever reason it never got green-lit, it would have been 2 years of basically nothing.

Now if I’m not mistaken, I thought I saw your names in the credits for doing some of the special effects.

PETER: Yeah, that’s right.

Could you talk about what effects you specifically did…I’m curious what your involvement was in the effects? When I spoke to Neill [Blomkamp] for “District 9″ he talked about how he was personally very involved with certain things and explained some CGI stuff, so I’m really fascinated about this new generation of directors who are doing effects themselves.

PETER: Yeah. I mean, we did a lot of effects actually. There were 3 companies-there was a company that did a lot of the blood farm and really complex stuff like that. And then there was a company that just handled vampire disintegrations. And Michael and I did a lot of wire removal and a lot of blue screen…green screen. Some digital city shots. I mean, there was a lot of things that we did. And we never had planned on doing that. It’s just that because of the resources we didn’t want to drop anything and so we just said we’ll do these visual effects ourselves. If we can’t afford to do them, we’ll do them ourselves.

And so what kind of system did you guys work on?

PETER: It was a very basic Mac desktop computer. Michael did all the effects on his laptop. And it’s crazy because you can do that stuff. It’s not…and we’re using regular kind of off the shelf software, Photoshop, after effects. That kind of stuff. Lightwave 3D.

I’ve heard stories about this, but that’s really cool. There’s two specific things that are awesome in the movie. One of which is a shot towards the end, which I’m sure you guys know what shot I’m talking about, and I don’t want to give away too much, but there’s a shot of let’s just say a lot going on in the frame towards the end of the film. How tough was that shot and how long did it take for you guys to do that? Who did that shot, if you know what I’m talking about?

PETER: Yeah, yeah. That was…so there’s a lot of layers in that shot because there’s only about 5 people in the frame each time. So what you’re doing is trying to find the sort of peak moment in all that stuff so it’s all tiled together to make a single shot, so there’s a lot of green screens combined together to get it. And I think I shot that. I was on 2nd unit shooting that and it took a long time, a long time.

MICHAEL: We had separate elements of people just throwing arms in the air and legs and…

Totally. Like was sitting in the theatre like that is awesome. Like it was just a great shot, but also without giving anything away, there’s what I call…people were asking me today what I thought and I was talking about how there’s a few great moments of lets’ just say blood-work. I’ll use that term, right?

MICHAEL: Blood-work.

Obviously with the budget and you have certain moments where you can do that stuff, where was it? How tough was it to pick the moments to put those specific scenes in and were you limited with budget? Was it like story, was it script?

MICHAEL: Yeah, well I think that what we…special effects makeup, blood, gags all of that stuff, it takes a lot of time and it’s surprisingly not that much fun to shoot because it takes so long to re-set. There’s all these factors so you don’t really get a lot of enjoyment out of shooting them because, yeah, it can take up your whole day just shooting a simple splatter. We made sure we spread it out throughout the film, not that we give everybody all the blood at the beginning, but we wanted to make sure the ending is bloody as hell.

I think you got that.

MICHAEL: And, Peter help me out here…

PETER: Well, I mean what you’re trying to do is not say too much without giving it…

MICHAEL: Giving away, yeah.

PETER: The blood and all that stuff is there because it needs to be there, you know? There’s…

MICHAEL: It’s a vampire movie.

PETER: We’re not shying away from any of that and I think if I wanted to see a vampire movie, I would go and see a vampire movie with some blood in it. I don’t get vampire movies without any blood.

I know I’m running out of time so let me just, of course I have to ask, the thing that also I really enjoyed about the film is the high concept. You know, it’s an original idea and it’s a twist on the vampire thing that I really enjoyed.

Michael: Cool.

Also I’m a huge sci-fi guy and you mixed in a lot of stuff that I really like. Are you already thinking obviously for future stuff like twists on other kind of genres? Like what are you guys thinking about for future stuff?

MICHAEL: Well we actually what we’re doing now is we’re developing a project with Warner Brothers called “Captain Blood” which is based on the Raphael Sabatini novel. It’s a pirate movie but we’re taking the pirate theme or the swashbuckling pirate theme and turning it into a space pirate movie. So it’s pirates in space.

Let me ask you, is it a similar kind of…what else can you say anything more about it? Is it an R? Is it like a…

MICHAEL: No, it won’t be an R-rated movie. It’ll be maybe PG. I’m not sure yet how it’ll develop, but it’s going to be pretty cool. It’s a pretty cool, dark thing.

I’m assuming you guys are writing this as we speak.

MICHAEL: No, we’re working with another writer who’s writing it as we speak.

Okay, so you guys are planning on directing that one…oh, look at that. The little transition if you will.

PETER: Well, there’s something else that we’re writing as well, so there’s another project that we’re writing at the moment. So there’s a few things going on.

So in other words, you’ve taken the path of what we talked about at the beginning.

PETER: Yeah, exactly.

Let’s talk about actually the casting of everybody…like Willem Defoe and some of the other cast. With casting the other people, were these all first choices? Could you just talk about like meeting some of these people? Were they immediately on-board?

PETER: Yeah, I mean we were very lucky because they were all our first choices. So we had a very, very short list and Ethan was the first person to say yes. And I think Michael said it before, it really just changed the kind of possession of the picture and there was a lot of questions being asked well, if Ethan’s doing a movie like this what is it about it? There must be something interesting. And so we were able to get the material to Willem and Sam and a fantastic Aussie cast as well and they all responded positively almost straight away and were happy to come on-board. And I know that doesn’t…this is our first sort of big actor, big star experience and I know that that doesn’t happen very often that you get all your first choices or you get your very first or second choices. It’s pretty rare, so we’re very lucky.

Any deleted scenes? How many might be on the DVD?

PETER: There’s almost none. In fact, there’s really none. It was shot very economically.

I have to wrap. Thank you both so much. Congratulations on the movie.

PETER: No problem.

Source: collider.com

“When we made Daybreakers, I had never even heard of Twilight,” says Michael, who directed the upcoming vampire saga with brother Peter. “Our lead character’s name is Edward, and I started seeing these Edward the Vampire T-shirts. I’m like, ‘Do they already know about our film? What the hell’s going on?’ And I’m told there’s this other thing called Twilight. And I go, “What the hell’s Twilight?’”

The Spierigs – the Australia brothers who first caught our attention with 2003’s micro-budgeted zombie saga Undead – now know all too well about the girl-friendly Twilight saga. But they’re not worried the sequel New Moon will take a bite out of the ultra-violent Daybreakers’s business when it opens Jan. 10, 2010.

“I think it’s actually going to help us,” Michael says. “I would be worried if our film was like those, but our film is so different.”

And how so. The vampires played by Daybreakers’s Ethan Hawke and Twilight’s Robert Pattinson may share the same first name, but that’s where the similarities end. In Daybreakers, the fanged fiends desire human blood, not love. A decade after a plague turned billions into vampires, though, there’s not much blood left. The human race is close to extinction, and those suffering from blood deprivation are mutating into frenzied bat-like creatures called Subsiders. As a hematologist, Hawke’s ordered by his boss Sam Neill to quickly create a synthetic blood substitute. But when Willem Dafoe offers himself as living proof that vampires can revert back to human, Hawke pursues a course of action that he hopes will put an end to his and all others’ bloodsucking ways for good.

A day after Daybreakers received its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest ‘09, the Spierigs sat down to speak with ShockTillYouDrop and other media members to discuss creating a world controlled by vampires, enticing Ethan Hawke to bear his fangs, and the process of directing a film together.

Question: First zombies, now vampires? What next – werewolves?

Michael Spierig: If there actually is a good werewolf script out there, I’d love to do it. It’s been while there’s been a good werewolf; there hasn’t been a good one since Dog Soldiers. We just look for good scripts, and we didn’t intend on doing a vampire pic after Undead. We just came up with an idea and rolled with it. Six years later out comes Daybreakers. The project we’re working on at the moment is a science-fiction film [adaptation of the swashbuckler] Captain Blood. It’s very different to Undead or Daybreakers.

Question: Would you ever considering not directing a film together?

Peter Spierig: If Michael’s really passionate about something, and I’m really passionate about something, and it’s happening at the same time, quite possibly.

Michael: When we did Daybreakers, it felt like we did that a little bit. The schedule was pretty tight, so we split up often into two units, directing different actors at different times, which producers like because it’s double the production value. You never have to hand it off to another second unit director who doesn’t know the script or the ideas as intimately as the writer-directors would.

Question: What’s the division of labor?

Peter: It’s 50-50 much pretty the whole way.

Michael: We really pre-visualize everything in the sense we storyboard the movie and we did all the animatics ourselves…. So there’s not a lot of confusion when we get on set; we’re not steering in two different directions. It’s pretty seamless as far as having a singular vision.

Question: There’s social commentary running throughout Daybreakers. Is that something you added or it is a manifest result of creating such a community and environment?

Peter: It was always intended to be there, the idea of exploiting resources to the point that it has a detrimental effect on your world. It’s pretty obvious; it’s there in the film. The one thing we did talk a lot about was not to do it in a sort of way that would be too heavy-handed. Ultimately we’re making a piece of entertainment. It’s got to be fun. If you put in some social commentary that’s taking over from the enjoyment of the movie, then it becomes a problem. We talked a lot about how well [George A.] Romero does it just trying to find that balance.

Question: Daybreakers’s cast includes Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill. How did you sell them on joining the project?

Michael: Ethan was the first one to jump onboard…. Initially he said when his agent told him he had this script, a vampire film, he was like, “Vampires? I don’t know. I really don’t want to do it.” He sat down and read it and he fell in love with it. Because he said yes, it legitimized the project, and then we could get Sam Neill and Willem Dafoe. To his credit, [Hawke] was really instrumental to elevating the film to another level.

Question: Why adopt a retrofuturistic for the vampires dress and the world they live in?

Peter: We wanted to create a timeless feel…. We didn’t want the tinfoil future look. One of the best ways to do it is to go back to a classic look, and I think one of the best periods of design and fashion was probably around the ’40s going into the ’50s.

Question: Based on your experiences making Undead and Daybreakers, you did find you had more creative freedom directing a small independent vs. a studio film with a larger budget and a bigger-name cast?

Michael: Not really. Undead had so many limitations because we had no money. That film was difficult to make. There was no one working on Undead who had made a feature film before, including cast, including crew. When you get onto a larger film, you get a sense of joy or a sense of confident in working with more experienced people. I think the best thing a director can do is work with people who are so much better than they are. And when you get great actors that offer so much more, and when you get a great cinematography and designer and effects people, they just offer so much more. There’s something great about getting to work with people at that level. As far as having to sanitize a film, because you’re obligated to make more money back, we didn’t have that problem, either. Lionsgate are pretty open to going all out. These are the guys that make the Saw movies.

Peter: They never really stepped in a said, “Guys, this is your first big movie and we’re going to micromanage it and watch over you the whole time.” And the other thing we made sure of with our second movie is that we shot it in Australia. So we were far, far away from Hollywood.

Question: And you could always cite Saw if anyone thought the violence was too extreme, right?

Michael: That was never an issue. It was more like, “Guys, is this bloody enough?”

Question: You shot Daybreakers in 2007. It doesn’t open until January 2010. Why the delay?

Michael: There are several factors. There’s a fairly long post process, running out of money, finding more money and all that sort of stuff…. We were supposed to be released around this time, right now. I’m glad we didn’t actually, because it seems like there are so many horror films and they’re all just dying because there’s so much saturation.

Peter: And what also happened was that we had a test screening and it tested really well. It was one of the highest-tested Lionsgate horror films. So they realized they were going to put it on a date that gave it a real chance of opening and opening probably. And the only date that was available was in January.

Michael: It’s definitely a different time now. When we made Undead, that screened very briefly in cinemas across America, and there’s no way we could ever get a movie like that into cinemas nowadays with the amount of movies that are out there.

Question: It is a help or a hindrance that there are so many vampire films out there today?

Peter: We had no idea the first Twilight film had been announced by the time we were making [Daybreakers]. It’s just one of things that happened. The vampire … is really the first movie monster that ever existed in cinema. [The genre's] been around forever, and it will be around for as long as we’re around, as long as human beings are around.

Question: R-rated horror films have having a tough time at the box office when they are a remake, a sequel to a hit like Saw, or in 3-D. Any concerns for Daybreakers?

Peter: I think it definitely helps that we’re in a genre that’s really popular. And the other thing that we have, which perhaps some of those other R-rated horror films don’t have, is that we have a really recognizable cast. That is definitely going to help us as well.

Question: Daybreakers features vampires that do not cast reflections in the mirror and burn when exposed to the sunlight. In this day and age of Twilight, why populate Daybreakers with such old-school vampires?

Peter: We wanted to do the popular-culture vampire myth and then also try to add something new to it. When you twist it too much, when you take one element and you add in a whole bunch of other stuff that’s outside what the popular culture accepts, I find it a little bit disrespectful to the genre. I’d rather take the rules and then subvert them in a way and do something different. I don’t get the sparkling skin [in Twilight]. I really don’t understand that one.

Question: Why it is necessary to respect the vampire myth?

Peter: What I love about it is the fascination with immortality and there are very few monsters out there that are kind of attractive and have a sexual appeal. People are drawn to that kind of stuff. The idea of blood being life, it all is very connected to us in a very subconscious level.

Question: Daybreakers ends with…

Michael and Peter (together): Shh!

Question: Have you already decided what happens next?

Michael: Absolutely, we have. We don’t want to jinx anything. We’ll see what happens in January, but we do have a lot of ideas if we get to do another one. [There will be] a lot more Subsiders if we get to do another one.

Source: shocktillyoudrop.com

Arriving in Calcutta sans some of their luggage, high-powered lawyer Fiona (Radha Mitchell) and her laid-back musician hubby Ben (Joel Edgerton) quickly get a taste of what it’s like to operate on Indian time. After getting little satisfaction at the baggage claim (“This is India,” a tired worker proclaims), they face an irritating wait for their hotel-dispatched driver, Krishna (Samrat Chakrabarti).

Things don’t go smoothly with the adoption, either. As the agency continues to put off their appointment, long-unresolved relationship issues start to surface. Fiona and Ben ultimately grate on each other’s nerves to the point of separation.

As the pic progresses, the way the multiple themes of McCarthy’s script play out starts to feel overly schematic and often forced. Moreover, the information slowly revealed about the couple’s past and personal secrets might have had more impact if incorporated earlier on.

Mitchell, also credited as an executive producer, nails the character of an abrasive Type A personality gradually accepting her lack of control. Likewise, Edgerton credibly plays the initially more passive partner who progressively develops maturity and strength. Thus, it’s even more of a shame when McCarthy ends several intense emotional scenes between the two by resorting to visual cliches.

Standout lensing by Denson Baker modulates from an intimate semi-verite style within the closed confines of the couple’s luxury hotel to a more distanced, observational stance as they move outside. A DV camera into which they separately express their hopes and fears about parenthood becomes a dramatic marker in their relationship.

The rest of the strong tech package makes Calcutta palpable.

Source: variety.com

The day after the successful premiere of the film at TIFF, I had a chance to chat to the very exhausted Michael and Peter about who came up with the idea first, a potentially fatal disease the cast and crew got and what we can expect next from the duo.

ShockTillYouDrop.com: Who came up with the idea for Daybeakers first?

Michael: Well, perhaps it was I who came up with the original idea. We were just chatting about vampire films and I threw out there, well, what if we turn the tables a little bit and the whole world has been dominated by vampires. And instead of it being post apocalyptic vampire film, let’s put them back in their homes and have them try to live as normal vampire folk. The fun in that is we can add vampire modifications to lifestyles like driving during the daytime with blacked out windows and using video cameras to see where they are going.

Shock: Are they shopping at Prada stores too?

Michael: [laughs] Well no, we didn’t get their sponsorship. Well, not yet!

Shock: Now, we got two writers and two directors and one movie. Is that difficult when actually being on set and filming?

Peter: Not really. We did have a lot of ideas that were thrown out but that wasn’t because we didn’t like them we just simply needed to focus on the story and the characters. There are just so many possibilities and a lot of which didn’t end up on screen. There is no tug of war and if Michael is passionate about something and if he can convey why it’s a good idea or it’s not then, yeah…

Shock: You wrote Daybreakers in ‘03. With the new hyper popularity of vampire films and shows were you guys worried at all about the film being dumped in with the rest of them even though you had this well thought out before hand?

Michael: There have always been vampire films. It’s not like they have gone away. Even if you think back to a couple years ago, you got Buffy and Angel and what was the other…

Peter: The Blade films…

Michael: It’s not like there’s more now. There’s just more attention on them or something because there has always been a lot of vampire films. I just think there is a new audience now with Twilight, which I guess is drawing in teenagers who have never really seen this genre before.

Shock: Willem Dafoe. He’s credited as Elvis. Elaborate, please!

Peter: He’s a big Elvis fan! He used to design and build custom cars. His character discovers something pretty substantial in the vampire world and it can make a pretty big difference to their lives. I’m not gonna tell you what that is! You got to see the movie!

Shock: You had WETA working on the special effects here. I know you two are very hands-on with effects so did they have full creative freedom on this?

Peter: Steve [Boyle]. It was Steve’s show. Absolutely his show. He worked heavily with us and with concept designers and they gave us a lot of options.

Shock: What can we expect from them in their appearance?

Peter: They have a bat-like look but they are also different from [Bram Stoker' Dracula] or any of that iconic vampire stuff. They are slightly different.

Shock: I heard some interesting things happened on set while filming. Anyone got a good story they want to share?

Peter: We had an outbreak of a virus called Shigella, which is this horrible bacterial disease, and it causes death in third world countries. We had 50 people on our crew and cast go down with this thing. It was horrendous, you would turn up one day and it would be an entirely different crew because they would have all been wiped out by this virus. Our leading lady was sick, it was really difficult to deal with, especially since you don’t get any second chances to go back to a set or whatever if your actor is just, passed out!

Shock: They were all okay though in the end?

Peter: Oh yeah, but it was just horrendous. Michael got sick twice.

Shock: As I mentioned before…zombies, vampires, I’m sure you have something written for your next feature. Can you shed any light on that?

Peter: Well, we can’t really mention much about it, but we can mention a project we are developing with Warner Brothers called Captain Blood. It’s based on the Rafael Sabatini novel and it was also a film in the ‘30s with Errol Flynn. This is a new spin on it, it’s going to be a science fiction movie.

Shock: I was hoping you would say that.

Peter: It’s something really quite different. It still follows the classic story but puts it in a new light.

Source: shocktillyoudrop.com

By this description alone, you understand this is no “Monsoon Wedding” or even “City of Joy.” While the film’s grip on a viewer dramatically increases as the story moves deeper and deeper into an experience that exposes a couple’s troubled relationship, McCarthy makes no concessions to commercial considerations. The film is solely designed for festivals and art venues but word of mouth should help “The Waiting City” reach a receptive audience.

Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton play a 30-something Australian couple, who comes to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) to claim an adopted daughter, Lakshmi. Red tape delays things so they are forced to wait in this exotic and often trying city.

The wife, a lawyer, juggles her mobile phone and laptop so that it’s like she never left the office. The husband is a musician so with an adventurous spirit and guitar in hand he makes friends easily in the city. His running into a pretty fellow musician (Isabel Lucas) causes displeasure in his wife, the first notable crack in the happy-couple facade.

Kolkata with its frustrations, alien customs and thousands of gods put the couple’s relationship to a test. Long-ignored resentments, hidden feelings and one very bad secret bubble to the surface.

Mother India herself seems to challenge the newcomers. A hotel worker (Samrat Chakrabarti), who befriends them, doesn’t even disguise his concern about a white couple adopting an Indian child or about the wife’s lack of religious faith. A clear-headed nun (Tilotamma Shome) demonstrates her love for the child is equal to theirs.

A trip to their daughter’s hometown and a first encounter with Lakshmi herself puts further stress on their stability. Are they even suitable as a couple, much less parents?

When one is surrounded by gods and devotion, Western dismissal seems shallow. In Kolkata, a filthy river is holy and a Catholic orphanage thinks nothing of closing to celebrate a Moslem holiday. The culture is steeped in belief. When life hangs in the balance in this place, unbelief is no help.

The film is not without its touristic elements. The director and her cinematographer, Denson Baker, aren’t going to pass up the opportunity to show the glories and the muck of this ancient city. Bureaucracy, lost luggage, destitute beggars, upset bowels and a snake assail the visitors.

Yet McCarthy is not about to fetishize poverty or celebrate the exotic. India offers the couple a different way to look at everything. It invigorates them. Their former life has become the dream and the intense experience of India is now the reality.

It comes as no surprise to learn that McCarthy has worked in orphanages and the slums of India so hers is both an insider and an outsider’s viewpoint. This attitude informs every frame of this fascinating drama, a welcome addition to the new Australian cinema.

Source: hollywoodreporter.com