I had the pleasure to chat with Peter and Micheal Spierif during a phone interview to promote the DVD/Blu-ray release of Daybreakers. Peter recalled how he and his twin brother sparked the film’s initial concept. “I think Michael might have come up with just a very brief one-liner of, ‘What if the world was dominated by vampires?’ and then I added, ‘What if they weren’t [in a] postapocalyptical kind of world?’ and we kind of bounced back and forth with ‘What if?’”
“It was always, what if they moved back to their homes and then went back to regular jobs and the big dilemma is that they’re running out of their food supply, which is human beings. What’s that world going to be like?” Michael added.
The Spierig Brothers hail from Australia and until Daybreakers had a few shorts and one low budget horror film, 2003’s Undead, carrying their credits. Sharing writing and directing roles, they found that the tricks of the visual trade they picked up during their first feature would 
serve them well while in production with Daybreakers as well. “Peter and I ended taking on a lot of the visual effects ourselves again, which is what we did on our first film to keep the cost down,” Michael admitted. “It wasn’t something we originally planned on doing, but again [with] budget constraints we ended up having to do it. I guess it’s good to have that knowledge when it comes to visual effects.”
The payoff is a low budget yet stylish vampire genre film that holds its own against blockbusters that racked up at least five times the budget. For the most part, Peter said they are satisfied with the results. “We were terrified when we shot that last scene, saying, ‘Gee, do we have enough footage?’ I never thought we did have enough; I always wanted more. I think it turned out okay, though. I wanted it to be bloodier. It’s still bloody enough, I guess,” he laughed.
How did they manage to lure in talent such as Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill and Willem Dafoe? “We wrote the script saying we’d really like an Ethan Hawke type, never assuming we’d actually be able to get him. He was just sort of an archetype, I guess, in some respect,” Michael explained. “We just said, ‘What the hell, let’s go ask him and see what he says.’ He responded amazingly to it. He loved the material, and once he said yes it kind of opened the door to legitimize the project. We were very lucky everybody said yes, which was a huge surprise to us, particularly considering some of these guys, certainly Ethan, hadn’t done a horror film before.”
“He keeps saying that he doesn’t like horror films but he’s seen every one. I don’t believe that he doesn’t like horror films,” Peter added. “[Willem] had fun with it. I always think these serious actors, they always like doing these parts because it gives them a chance to be a kid again and play cowboys and Indians. They all love it.”
Speaking of love for horror films, what inspired the Spierigs to contribute to the vampire genre? Michael was quick to answer. “Near Dark is a big one, Kathryn Bigelow’s forgotten classic in many respects; I love that movie and that was of course a good time for vampire films that year [which] was dominated by another great film The Lost Boys, which is the ‘Corey classic.’ And there’s a fun Roman Polanski one, The Fearless Vampire Killers--Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. It was an odd movie, really kind of twisted and kind of fun.”
Prior to writing the script for Daybreakers, the brothers inadvertently wrote a detailed graphic novel to use as source material. “We’ve written a very detailed backstory on how the vampire plague happened and how the world reacted and how it spread. All of that really isn’t in the movie, but it’s kind of necessary to understand before you write that story. Maybe it’ll get published sometime soon, maybe it will be another feature film--it’s hard to know at this stage,” Peter said.
But for now, any thoughts of a Daybreakers sequel, prequel or an updated Captain Blood feature (based on the Errol Flynn classic) are on hold. “We’re currently working on the sequel to The Dark Crystal, which is really exciting and sort of a big passion of ours. It’s such a complex movie that it’s going to consume all our time for the next couple of years,” Michael explained.
Michael and Peter will be directing The Power of the Dark Crystal from a script written by Baz Luhrmann alumni Craig Pearce (Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge). At this point, I felt compelled to interject, "You Aussies kick ass" to which Micheal replied, "We've been doing it for years!"
Are there any issues directing material they did not have a hand in writing? “We’ve written purely out of necessity. We’ve felt like in order to get our career to a certain point, in order for people to take us seriously and so we’re not directing the twentieth sequel to a straight-to-video horror film or that sort of thing, we felt that we had to take the initiative and write our own project and dictate our path,” Peter said. “Now we’re fortunate that we have the opportunity to work with some extremely talented and experienced writers, which is what we’ve always strived for and thankfully now it’s starting to happen.”
Back to the matter at hand, the release of Daybreakers on DVD and Blu-ray. “We put in a feature-length documentary about the making of the film; it’s all in high definition. It’s a really in-depth account of how we made the film, it’s not a total love fest like most of these ‘making-of’ documentaries are; it’s an honest, accurate account of how you make a movie and it starts from the initial script stage all the way to premiering [the film] at the Toronto Film Festival,” Peter enthused. “It’s a very comprehensive account of how this film was made. We have interesting things [in it], like a producer being rushed to the hospital--he got hit by a car--lots of interesting things like that happens while you’re trying to get a film made,” he laughed.
“There’s also obviously a commentary track and we managed to remaster one of our short films (‘The Big Picture‘) and put it on the Blu-Ray disc and in high definition as well, which is great. The short film has nothing to do with Daybreakers, but it is a fun little addition if you’re sort of curious about how we got started and where we came from,” Peter continued with another chuckle. “The audio’s been mastered to 7.1 which is fantastic--it sounds incredible. It’s a great disc; certainly the Blu-Ray is very comprehensive. Definitely worth the money.”
I'm sold! Checking out some Blu-ray deals at Best Buy as I type....
