Columbia Pictures’ epic action thriller “Underworld: Blood Wars,” the latest instalment in the blockbuster franchise, picks up in the aftermath of 2012’s “Underworld: Awakening” in which Selene (Kate Beckinsale) discovered that she had a daughter, Eve, with her former lover, Michael Corvin. At the end of the film, the reunited mother and daughter embark on a hunt for the missing father.
“We are back with Selene in this film,” says producer David Kern. “Selene is on the run and is having a difficult time being reunited with her daughter.” The mother-daughter team get separated along the way and Selene meets up with another ally from “Awakening,” David (Theo James). “Together, Selene and David are trying to find the daughter that she’s been separated from,” Kern continues. “And they get clogged up with a new Lycan, Marius, who is a bad-ass dude, much like Lucian [Michael Sheen] in the first film, but even scarier and nastier and more dangerous.”
The imposing character of Marius is a Super Lycan and he is lusting after the blood of both Selene and Eve as he bids to become the most powerful being of all, and to bring a final victory to the Lycan species. Marius is played by “Game of Thrones” star Tobias Menzies.
“Underworld is a really exciting series that gives you really amazing opportunities as a filmmaker, visually and creatively, to create a new world,” shares director Anna Foerster.
“With Underworld you have rules that are very specific for the story and for the franchise, but you can veer off from that. On purely the visual and creative side, it is extremely exciting.”
One of the rules to which the director refers pertains to the visual style, with all of the Underworld films to date defined by a near-monochromatic colour palette, heavy on blue and black.
“There is a certain expectation there but within that there is a playfulness to take advantage of,” says Foerster. “This film is going into different environments and we have a different feel and different colours.”
In “Blood Wars,” the audience is taken into a Nordic vampire coven in the far north. “When we go into the north and into the snow, there is definitely a different colour palette,” Foerster adds. “Here people wear white and they wear furs and they have white skin. That was a fun way to push this into another direction.
“But, that said, we’ve evolved a new direction in monochrome as well. I like the monochrome. It is part of the franchise’s style and I think it is cool when you are in that dark-bluish, monochrome, eastern coven world. And then you go into the north and you see greys, silvers and whites.
“Then it becomes really interesting when they mix, which happens towards the end of the movie; the two environments mix and you suddenly have that contrast.”
This contrast should excite fans, echoes producer David Kern. “We go to a few different environments that haven’t been seen in an Underworld movie before, and they have required different designs and different ways of thinking,” he says.
“Everyone thinks of Underworld as very dark and blue, a city-type landscape, so we are having fun opening that up and sending Selene and David off into different regions. That is really cool.”
Opening across the Philippines on Nov. 30, “Underworld: Blood Wars” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.
