Interview: Chicago ‘Underworld: Rise of the Lycans’ Writer Kevin Grevioux on Science-Based Vampires

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“The initial attraction was always to be something more than what you are,” Grevioux said. “The initial powers were just heightened aspects of what humans could already do like being able to run fast, lift heavy weights or being resistant to injury. But nowadays – with the level of technology that brings them to life – it lends itself to a very visual type of movie. It’s one thing to see it in a comic book, but to be able to make it look real, that really puts you into a fantasy.”

Grevioux (who has written Marvel comics on characters including Spider-Man, Iron Man, Dr. Strange and Young Avengers) especially scratched his feline curiosity itch in our interview with the Iron Man and Batman characters. He believes they’re not so far off from what could actually be.

Bill Nighy (left) and Rhona Mitra star in “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans”.
Photo credit: Ken George, Lakeshore Entertainment Group

“Someone could go out there and be Batman. Now they’re gonna get shot,” Grevioux said while erupting into laughter, “but you can see a guy going out there, putting on a batsuit and beating a couple guys up. Now with Iron Man, you do wonder… They have different aspects of military armor with weapons on them. Man, I wonder…”

Putting on his conspiracy cap, Grevioux added: “I believe there are scientists out there who do push the edge when it comes to science. You can’t tell me someone has not created a suit of armor or even just a prototype. Now it doesn’t look like the slick one we saw in ‘Iron Man,’ but I can guarantee you it has gauntlets, guns on the shoulders and is resistant to bullets. It probably just can’t move very far very fast. But they’ve tried it. I like thinking about stuff like that.”

Grevioux uses his old physics and genetic engineering books as inspiration for new writing material.

Bill Nighy in “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans”. Photo credit: Ken George, Lakeshore Entertainment

“I’ll flip through them and, for example, create some soldiers in outer space for an extended amount of time,” Grevioux said. “Now how would that be done? With some recombinant DNA techniques, why can’t you inject soldiers with chloroplasts so they can get their nourishment from solar energy?”

Grevioux added: “Dang. That’s kind of cool. You might get skinny, but you won’t die of starvation because you are getting your nourishment through the sun or refracted or reflected sunlight. It could work.”

Kevin Grevioux’s Chicago Roots

Though there’s no surprise that he’s now a Los Angeles guy, Grevioux has one word to sum up his primary memory of Chicago: “Pizza.”

“I’m a huge pizza freak,” Grevioux said. “When we were kids in Chicago, we used to go to the Home Run Inn. I remember Giordano’s and Gino’s where people would carve their names in the walls. I also remember going to Wrigley Field as a kid because one of my favorite baseball players at the time was Dick Allen.”

Wrapping Up the ‘Underworld’ Film Series

Might there be a fourth “Underworld” film? Grevioux says the third one does the series justice.

“In a lot of ways, ‘Underworld: Rise of the Lycans’ is superior to all the other ones. We get more of the Lycans, the origin of the whole war and we get the sympathy that comes with it,” Grevioux said. “It’s like Spartacus meets werewolfs. That’s what you want. It’s about a Lycan revolt.”

RELATED IMAGE GALLERY See our full “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” image gallery. RELATED READING Read more writing from critic Adam Fendelman.

Using William Shakespeare’s story of Romeo and Juliet as an archetype, Grevioux based “Underworld” on his real-life experiences with interracial dating and the tension often associated with it.

“The best films are those that are not about the genre in which they are created. Even though I use horror characters, ‘Underworld’ told the story of a forbidden, interracial love amid the backdrop of a centuries-old race war,” Grevioux said.

He added: “Having dated interracially, you see the stares you get when you walk past certain people. In being a bigger guy, you’re not going to necessarily get into confrontations like you would back in the 1960s, but the ire from some people is still there. That’s unfortunate.”

So who would win in a fight to the death between a vampire and a werewolf? While the vampire has eclipsed the werewolf in popular culture and more people cling to the fanged creatures than the hairy beasts, Grevioux’s writing isn’t politically correct.

“The way I designed this series is that it would take two vampires to take down one Lycan, but that has somewhat changed as people identify more with vampires,” he said. Grevioux concluded proudly: “In the first ‘Underworld’ film, though, I killed a vampire who I faced off with hand to hand.”

By ADAM FENDELMAN Editor-in-Chief HollywoodChicago.com adam@hollywoodchicago.com