One of the more worthwhile vampire flicks of the last few years is 30 Days of Night, an adaptation of the bloody and violent comic mini-series by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith. Director David Slade (who will be directed the third Twilight movie, Eclipse) did an excellent job with it and I liked it when I saw it in theaters – but it improved for me on DVD. It’s not a fantastic film, but the vampire mythology they have in it, with the vampires having their own language amongst other things, was one of the coolest things to grace the big-screen back in 2007.
There have been rumors and whispers about a possible sequel going around ever since the first one came out, and those who are into their comics know there is not only a sequel in that form but various other stories even after that. Well, according to Niles not only is there going to be a movie sequel, but one has already been written – by he and Ben Ketai.
In an interview with MTV, Niles had this to say:
“There will be a sequel… The script is in. I’ve been working on it with a buddy of mine, Ben Ketai, who directed the last round of the online webisodes… The script is based on ‘Dark Days.”
Dark Days is the original follow up story, and it follows [Warning: Spoilers ahead for those who haven't seen 30 Days of Night]:
“…the character of Stella Olemaun heads to Los Angeles after surviving the vampire attack in Barrow, Alaska. She intentionally attracts the attention of the local vampire population in order to avenge the death of her husband, Eben, during the Barrow incident.”
However, this news may not be as exciting as you might think at first - the word is that the sequel will most likely go straight-to-DVD. The reason being mainly that the first didn’t make as much money as the filmmakers were hoping. Niles went on to say:
“We didn’t hit that magic $100 million, but I had a long talk with Sam [Raimi - producer]. He called me and just said, ‘Don’t be too quick to judge this direct-to-DVD market, especially with the sci-fi market.’”
“This way we’d be able to do all the comics… We won’t have the massive competition of the box office, and theoretically, we could move on to ‘Return to Barrow’ and to the other series and short stories.”
“Ghost House [Sam Raimi's horror production company] has a small industry going with just their direct-to-DVD movies for horror… It’s a changing market.”
Although I can kind of see where they’re coming from with their attraction to just releasing it on DVD, I still think going for a full theatrical release is the better option. With the exception of some of those small indie films that may not have enough financial backing to get a theatrical release, generally speaking, straight-to-DVD movies aren’t quality stuff. They advertise them as such, with their big name actors for example, but think about it; if the movie was any good why would they release it straight-to-DVD?
That’s not saying a straight-to-DVD Dark Days movie wouldn’t be good, but if it was then I don’t see why they would want to have it in the same straight-to-DVD category as those other ”crappy movies.” Don’t agree? Go into your local Blockbuster store and take a gander at the horror/sci-fi movies lining the “New Releases” shelf.
Some artwork from Dark Days
Even though 30 Days of Night didn’t hit “the magic $100 million,” as Niles points out, it was by no means a box-office failure. In fact, it did rather well for the type of film that it was. It cost approximately $32 million to make and made almost $100 million worldwide including DVD sales. Even with the cost of marketing and such, that is a pretty respectable financial outcome.
I haven’t read the comic series sequel Dark Days, but the plot description certainly sounds like a decent way to carry on the story, if they’re going to go down the route of following a human character as the central figure. If they weren’t going to base it explicitly on the original sequel, I would much rather see a prequel of some sort that showed the history of the fascinating vampire race we were introduced to in the first one.
They did it with Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, I don’t see why they couldn’t follow suit with this one…
I really hope they change their minds and decide to go for a full theatrical release with this sequel. If they change the name to something like “30 Days of Night: The Dark Days” then you’ve taken care of the name recognition problem (most people wouldn’t know, looking at just the title, that Dark Days had anything to do with 30 Days of Night), and I think most people will very much want to find out what happened after the events of the first one.
Do you think they’re should be a sequel made to 30 Days of Night and should it get a theatrical or a straight-to-DVD release?
Source: MTV Splash Page
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