Quarless says his updated version is about a guy who is the adopted son of a Southern small-town preacher and grows up in a very Christian family. When he gets older he finds he’s the heir to a men’s magazine empire and he has to come to L.A. and run it.”

Hartman-Edwards (American Dreams) will executive produce and write the pilot, which will be based on the Griffin Dunne novel that served as the inspiration for the 1998 Warner Bros. feature which starred Bullock and Nicole Kidman as Sally and Gillian Owens.

Playing the warrior was very interesting to her. “You realize, as a woman, you think just in terms of sort of desexualizing everything. You keep yourself quite small and if you are out by yourself you don’t want to attract too much attention. You have to keep yourself quite covered and all that. If you are trying to become a warrior, you have to really smash through that whole instinct and open up your body like mad. Your legs are sort of opened. Your chest is opened. And you are making noise, punching people. It was quite an insight to what it feels like walking around as a man. And what it feels like being a woman, which is very different. I just found that interesting personally, and quite liberating, actually.

The female Vampire had to have chemistry with the Lycan, played by Scott Speedman, but that wasn’t a problem. “Everybody got along well on the movie. I think he was kind of off his normal game, and so was I. The director, it was his first movie. The writer, it was his first movie. And the stunt coordinator, it was the first thing he was stunt coordinating. So there was kind of a really magical energy to it, that nobody was doing it for the money or doing it just because this was what they always do. Looking back, it feels like missing it like you miss summer camp when you were a kid. It was really a great experience. It really was.”

And it shows on the big screen. Another thing you’ll be seeing is tight costumes, especially that of Selene’s. “This is the thing: When a woman is told she is going to be wearing a black latex jumpsuit, she immediately goes into a flat spin,” Kate tells ComingSoon.net. “I arrived in Budapest thinking, ‘Well, he is not going to know where it needs to fall on the hips, where this is going to happen. I need to tell him.’ Basically every time I had a single remark, he’s taken care of it. So that is really how the whole relationship went in the movie. We just happened to have the same eye and taste, and that was a huge relief to me, because I never found myself wearing something I didn’t feel completely comfortable in.”

Kate was able to keep the costume, but her husband - the director Len Wiseman - hasn’t made her put it on for any special occasions… yet! In the film, the costume’s look helped her play the character. “It does help out. I mean, I’d done two or three months of training before I came in and had costume fittings for ‘Underworld.’ I was really glad that I had that training because I think I would have felt much more like a model in a music video than the character, at that point, because I’d already learned how to box and how to fire guns and how to do all that stuff. And it’s kind of a kinky outfit. So without the training, I would have felt fetishy and a bit funny.”

She also had to wear Vampire teeth and contact lenses, of course. “The teeth were so comfortable. But I would always take them out because you can’t eat, and it makes talking slightly more of a challenge. But there was times where the makeup artist and I would just get to the end of the scene and I go, ‘Oh S***, teeth!’ And she would go, ‘Oh S***! Did he notice? Should we say anything? No!’ There are a couple of scenes in the movie where she forgot to put them in.”

The contact lenses didn’t make her see any better. “They were very bright blue, and quite difficult to see out of. It was good for me, because I don’t see very well anyway. So they happened to get them in my prescription. I saw a little bit better than I normally do and a little bit worse at the same time. It’s kind of the same thing. They are a bit cloudy. You don’t have any peripheral vision, so that was difficult, if you were wearing them and doing the wire thing and having to land in the right place.”

The movie filmed in Budapest, Hungary last year, which help the actors get their minds around the serial aspects of the story, that the creatures really exist. “I didn’t find that too difficult. I think that actors become actors because they’ve got a fairly rampant imagination anyway. That didn’t really bother me. Especially with the world that we created, it’s very much a contained world, and we felt like we were in one. We were mainly shooting at night; it felt like nobody was out but us. So kind of the ’suspension of disbelief’ thing was pretty good on the movie.”

Kate didn’t think the role would be too challenging. “Not while I was doing it at all. I did have that shortly before I left, where my agent said ‘it’s very good that you are doing this because the whole movie is you. And if it does well then it’s all basically done to you.’ And I thought if it sucks, then it’s all my fault. Then I thought its good that I’m doing on a werewolf/vampire movie. Do I really want do that? Once I started doing it, it felt like the action movie I wanted to do. And I had such a lovely time doing it that it sort of became beside the point whether it did well or not because it was such an important experience for me.”

She got quite the collection of bruises while filming though. “So many. No broken bones, but a lot of bruises. A lot of funky-looking kind of hickey things from the harness, because you have it on all day, and it kind of squeezes you. You have long big red blood vessels all over you. It becomes a badge of honor though. I think it’s that thing that actors who normally have a little bit of drama if they break a nail. You now start to think, ‘I’m getting injured at work now. I’m getting injured and hurting myself and suffering. It means I have to be very tough.’ Scott and I would compare our injuries. I think I had more hickeys, but he had actual cuts. He got dragged along the floor.”

Kate says she’s very happy with how the movie turned out. “When you see how it’s lit, how they added sound effects on it and all that kind of stuff, it’s kind of amazing.” It sure is, leaving only one question left to ask - would she do a sequel? “Oh yeah, I really enjoy playing this character. I really did. It would be fun.”

The final three episodes of “8 Simple Rules…” completed by Ritter will air sequentially beginning with the season premiere on Tuesday, September 23 8/7c, says ABC. Each of these episodes will open with a special introduction by members of the cast.

After the three episodes, the series will go into repeats while writers retool it and production starts. Future episodes will then take viewers into the Hennessy household as they experience the loss of a beloved father and construct a new life.

“Everybody recognizes that John loved that show… He’d have wanted the show to continue,” Lloyd Braun, chairman of ABC Entertainment Television Group, said today.

Cast:
Kate Beckinsale as Selene
Scott Speedman as Michael Corvin
Shane Brolly as Kraven
Michael Sheen as Lucian
Bill Nighy as Viktor
Erwin Leder as Singe
Sophia Myles as Erika
Richard Cetrone as Pierce
Robby Gee as Kahn
Kevin Grevioux as Raze
Danny McBride as Mason
Scott McElroy as Soren
Wentworth Miller as Dr. Adam Lockwood
Mike Mukatis as Taylor
Todd Schneider as Trix

Summary:
If you like Blade, you’ll like Underworld.

Story:
For 1000 years, werewolves and vampires have been at war. 600 years ago, the war took a turn when the vampire Kraven killed Lucian, the leader of the werewolves. Since then the werewolves have been in hiding, unable to form an effective force. Or so it seems.

Selene is one of the last of the vampire warriors, or Death Dealers. Though the tools and technology have changed over the years, Selene is still a ruthless and driven werewolf killer. Today she tracks the remainder of the werewolves in order to eliminate their species. Things change, though, when she discovers a hidden cell of werewolves. She also discovers that they are tracking a human, Michael Corvin, for some unknown purpose.

Selene warns the other vampires, but they are reluctant to believe that the werewolves have returned in any kind of force. Kraven, the current vampire leader, also refuses to believe Selene. On her own and going against the wishes of the vampire leadership, Selene must track down the werewolves and find out their reasons for wanting Corvin. However, along the way, she falls in love with the mysterious human. Will this prevent her from doing her duty as a Death Dealer?

Underworld is rated R for strong violence/gore and some language

What Worked:
Going into Underworld I was expecting a vampire and werewolf version of Romeo and Juliet. I was expecting a sophisticated romance / drama with a healthy dose of horror and action thrown in. That wasn’t what Underworld was at all. Simply put, it’s more like a Blade sequel than anything else. Make Blade a white girl and throw in some werewolves and you have this movie. There will be inevitable comparisons made to The Matrix, but it is more like Blade than anything else. Thus, your enjoyment of this film will heavily depend on what you thought of that vampire comic movie. I liked it, so I was into Underworld as well.

I thought the concept of this story was good. The idea of werewolves and vampires battling it out held great appeal to me. It offered up lots of potential for action, horror, and suspense. Underworld was able to tap into that potential with varying degrees of success. Underneath it all was a pretty good story that held some mystery, drama, and romance to keep audiences engrossed (and grossed out).

This movie would sink or swim based on the performance of Kate Beckinsale as Selene. If she sucked (no pun intended), the movie wouldn’t work. Fortunately, she does a great job. Not only is she a pretty face, but also she handles the action well. While I would have liked to see her act more vampire-like, I think her performance gets the job done.

The action is pretty good and the fight scenes are choreographed well. The opening scene featuring a gun battle on a subway is one of the high points of the film and a hard one to top. (Although I must wonder why these guys are such bad shots.) It sets the mood for the film early and gets you into this strange world on the right foot.

The film is also good-looking and well shot. The locations in Hungary look great. They make a great dark and depressing atmosphere (though it’s never clear what country they are in). The story is also well structured for sequels if this one does well at the box office. We’ll see if audiences get into it or give it the stake to the heart.

What Didn’t Work:
I enjoyed Underworld, but it wasn’t everything I hoped it would be. The vampires weren’t very vampirish. They mostly looked like humans walking around with big guns. We rarely see them use their powers or see their weaknesses exposed. The werewolves aren’t seen much in full werewolf form. (And since when are they immortal?) Maybe this was due to budget restrictions. Only once do we get to see all out war between the werewolves and vampires, and only then it’s a very brief glimpse. I wish there had been more of it. I also wanted to see more of the romance aspect explored, but that was barely touched on at all.

The movie starts out really strong and then slows down dramatically for quite a while. It doesn’t fully pick up speed again until near the end. In the meantime you may be checking your watch.

I also thought everyone except for Beckinsale and the werewolf played by the deep voiced Kevin Grevioux (who also co-wrote the movie) was miscast. The human played by Scott Speedman wasn’t terribly dashing or appealing. The balding and creepy Michael Sheen didn’t seem much like the horrible leader of the werewolves. Shane Brolly did nothing to impress me as Kraven, the scheming leader of the vampires. Bill Nighy is probably the most miscast as Viktor, the ancient granddaddy of the vampires. (He’s Viktor the Vampire! That rhymes!) As tough and as menacing as this character is supposed to be, Nighy is neither. His wavering accent even had people in the audience snickering as he did his best to look intimidating. Overall, better casting would have helped the movie.

Eowyn wields a mean sword. How did you like all that training?
Oh, it was great fun. The guys on the stunt team are really fantastic. It’s really funny, because for all the aggression they have to display on screen, they’re actually really happy, good-natured people. When we were shooting, they just said to me, ‘You know, it doesn’t really look like you’re slashing him there. You’ll really have to hit him.’ They had armor, but it still hurts. But they didn’t seem to mind, evidently they laughed about it afterwards.

“He said he was in the area and he wanted to stop by and have lunch. We’re having lunch, [director] Peter Berg came over and had lunch with us. Peter leans over to my ear and whispers ‘Hey, should I ask him to be in the movie?’ I said ‘Do you want to be in the movie.’ He’s eating and he says, ‘Yeah, let’s go, I’ll do it right now.’ He gets up and looks around and says ‘Let’s shoot.’ Within 15 minutes we’re on the set in the bar and all these extras are like ‘Oh my God, it’s Arnold.’ He has this bright jacket on, I don’t know where he got it, it had all these cartoons and characters on it. It was surreal, we had no dialogue. Peter asked him ‘So what do you want to do?’ Arnold says, ‘I just want to tell him to have fun.’ Great. Shoot it. That was it. It was really cool of him, really nice.”

It almost seems as if Arnold is passing the action hero baton to The Rock by doing this cameo. “Very much so. It’s very ironic and it’s funny how things happen out of a little lunch. Interestingly enough, I asked him ‘Where did that come from, ‘have fun’, Why do you want to say have fun?’ He told me, ‘You’re going where I’ve been.’ So that was great, really cool.”

The Rock says he and the Terminator go back some time. “I’ve known him for some time and I met his wife Maria Shriver. I spoke at the Republican convention, I met her there. When I was wrestling he came to see me wrestle, brought his kids, brought Maria.”

But, will he vote for him? “I don’t know. I have to see. I wish him luck.”

Dr. Toon: Eric, how is post-production going on Looney Tunes: Back In Action?

It’s given me and the animators here more license to put in some extra bits. Little acting choices, little timing choices, some nuances that everyone’s been very pleased with. We could also throw in some secondary gags that weren’t necessarily in the poses. Which is all to the good, because I think the animators came up with some great ideas, and they all have ways of realizing something that’s beyond what an initial pose drawing would be. And that — that’s what’s going to make it all work.

To play the Yankee-turned-samurai, Cruise did all the requisite training so he could perform the heavy lifting the film required. He pitched a tent on a tennis court at his house seven months before filming began, enlisted Nick Powell — who taught Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson their savage sword moves for “Gladiator’ and “Braveheart,’ respectively — and went to work. Cruise gained 20 pounds — most of it went to building muscle in his thighs, forearms and shoulders — to be able to comfortably wear the samurai armor and wield all the weaponry.

“You want to do something that’s exciting, and excitement usually comes with risk,’ Cruise says. “But that’s half the fun of it, I think.’