SamNeill Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Ten years from now, 95% of the human population has been transformed into vampires, with those few uninfected survivors evading capture as best they can and those already captured being farmed for every last drop of their blood. However, supplies are dwindling, substitutes aren't working, and vampires who are driven by starvation to feed on one another tend to mutate for the worse.

This is the world of Daybreakers, a more ambitious and straight-faced follow-up than anyone might've expected from the Spierig Brothers in the wake of their cheeky low-budget aliens-and-zombies debut, Undead; better yet, it's a smarter and more refreshing take on the vampire genre than most of late, and a solid action flick in its own right.

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Sometimes race isn't as simple as what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Sometimes those little DNA buggers, or whatever determines it, throw a fast one, and before you know it the unfathomable happens. You can get super-cute twin sisters who have drastically different skin color, or a black child born to white parents. The latter is the focus of Skin, which I first blogged about back in May. Now Variety reports that the Little Film Company has sold the feature to a number of international territories that include Brazil, France, and Scandinavia, and the BBC has picked up the the television rights for the UK -- there is, however, no word on North American distribution.

Directed by Anthony Fabian, the music coordinator for Hilary and Jackie, and written along with Helen Crawley, Skin focuses on the true story of a black girl born to white parents in South Africa, and the troubles she experienced with discrimination under apartheid laws. While the film has been floating under the radar, it has a pretty decent cast with stars Sophie Okonedo and Tony Kgoroge from Hotel Rwanda, plus Sam Neill (The Tudors), Alice Krige (Silent Hill), and newcomer Ella Ramangwane. Topping that with the fact that Little Film was also behind the worldwide sales for Tsotsi, and I'm sure we'll see Skin hit shelves at some point.

I've got yet more proof that Peter O'Toole has been replaced by a robot. The man is in his mid-70s, and after steadily doing a few projects here and there for years, he's taking on a cajillion, million roles. I seriously don't know where he's finding the energy, but now he's added another film to the roster, and possibly another chance at that little, elusive statue. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that O'Toole will join his Tudors co-stars Jeremy Northam and Sam Neill, along with Australia's Bryan Brown, in a new film called Dean Spanley. It's almost like someone was watching that show and figured they'd just cast from there, rather than go through the effort of a long search.

The feature is going to be the sophomore effort of Toa Fraser, who got the World Cinema Audience Prize at Sundance for his first film, No.2. Written by Rob Roy scribe Alan Sharp, THR describes it as a film: "Set in Edwardian England, where upper lips are always stiff and men from the Colonies are not entirely to be trusted, Spanley reveals just how deep an Englishman's love for his dog can go." Yeah, so the beginning sounds so very O'Toole, but I'm not sure what's up with the whole dog twist. There's nothing quite like a good tale of animosity between the Colonies and Mamma England, mixed in with canine love. The film will slip into shooting next month.

She isn't too well known in America, but Star Wars fans may recognize Claudia Karvan as the actress who played Padmé's elder sister Sola in Revenge of the Sith. Now the Australian actress, who is a popular television star in her native country, has landed herself another Hollywood role sure to make her more familiar to audiences in the States. She has been cast as the female lead in the futuristic vampire movie Daybreakers, in which she'll co-star with Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and fellow Aussie (slash New Zealander) Sam Neill. The casting of an up-and-coming Australian star makes perfect sense since the movie will be shot Down Under by Australian filmmakers the Spierig twins (Undead), who also wrote the screenplay.

According to Moviehole, Karvan will be playing a human love interest for Hawke's vampire character. The movie is set in 2017 when the world is mostly populated by vampires, a race that may become extinct once the blood-supplying humans are also extinct. Hawke is some sort of good guy vampire who is researching a way for his people to survive with a blood substitute. Dafoe plays his rival. Still no word on who or what Neill will be playing. If Karvan's part is correct, I think we can assume that once Hawke falls for her, he begins to think twice about feeding on humans. Of course, he could just turn her into a vampire and then live happily for eternity with her, but narratively that idea lacks conflict. Daybreakers begins filming soon and is set to release next year, which will be long after we've already seen I Am Legend, 30 Days of Night and Bloodrayne II. Hopefully we'll still be interested in vampires by that point.

Is there anything left to say about vampires? The question answers itself, but get ready for a new vampire movie, Daybreakers, starring Ethan Hawke. As we recently told you, Hawke won't actually be playing a vampire in the movie -- he's playing a researcher in the year 2017, when most of the world's population has been turned into vampires by a plague. With the number of human beings rapidly dwindling, the vampires face a problem -- how will they get blood after they've sucked the last person dry? Word comes today via ScreenDaily that Sam Neill has signed on to co-star with Hawke in the film, but frustratingly, they haven't revealed what part he's going to be playing in the film. If he's not the vampire leader, I think we'll all be very surprised and disappointed.

The president of Lionsgate International had this to say about the casting: "Sam Neill is an outstanding actor who brings gravitas to all his roles and we are delighted he is joining Ethan Hawke for this exceptional and visionary project." Gravitas, eh? We'll see about that. Writing and directing duties on this project are being shared by Peter and Michael Spierig, whose most recent film was 2003's Undead, which I haven't seen but sounds like good practice. Finally, the article also notes that the Weta Workshop has been tasked with putting together the effects for the film, which is a big bonus -- those guys know what they are doing. So who knows -- this might be one to look forward to. No word yet on when Daybreakers, but don't expect it to show up anywhere near the Sam Raimi-produced vampire film 30 Days of Night, which has already marked its release-date territory for late fall.

According to Production Weekly, Cillian Murphy (and Cillian Murphy) will be starring in a sci-fi movie called Telepathy. He will be playing identical twins Josef and Viktor Zalenski, who become part of a top-secret experiment to test telepathic communication. It seems the Russian Government thinks that one twin in space and one twin on Earth will be able to talk to each other via the mind. The picture will also star Nathalie Press, Sam Neill and Miranda Richardson and is due to begin shooting this October with Lesley Manning directing from a script written by Stephen Volk.

Okay, so the experiment sounds far-fetched but interesting. It doesn't sound like much of a plot, though. Perhaps it will be like Contact, and stretch a minimal amount of action while providing a lot of discussion about the phenomenon of telepathy. Or maybe there are some other story elements that aren't being given out just yet. A quick look at the resumes of both Manning and Volk shows the team is familiar enough with the supernatural to add something more, although neither of their talents has so far been well-received. Regardless, Murphy is an amazing talent, and after his ability (combined with Rachel McAdams) to actually make Red Eye more entertaining than its script should have allowed, I have confidence that whatever this movie is, it will work.