Twin writer-directors, single vision

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Long before Twilight and True Blood became cultural phenomena, the Australian twin-brother team of Michael and Peter Spierig began working on their own vampire film, Daybreakers , which opens today.

Coincidentally, it has a hero named Edward, a vampire hematologist of the near-future. During Daybreakers ' six-year gestation, Michael Spierig began seeing "Edward the vampire" T-shirts and, not knowing about Twilight , wondered if by some strange chance that people had already heard of his film.

Though entertainment's sudden fascination for blood-sucking took them by surprise, they're happy to be part of the current resurrection of the genre.

"Vampire films are as old as cinema, so it's not new in that sense," says Peter Spierig. "I think many horror films come out of times of economic crisis and can be a metaphor for so many things that have gone wrong. In our case, it's about sucking resources dry."

While Twilight is full of pent-up teen sexuality and True Blood is about social prejudices, Daybreakers portrays a civilization in which vampires are in the majority and, having killed most of their human food supply, face extinction themselves.

For the Spierigs, a story about the collapse of civilization isn't just timely; it's one of their favourite themes. From childhood, they have shared a great interest in the kinds of films and books "we weren't supposed to read," says Peter, who lists Stephen King, Peter Jackson, David Cronenberg, George Romero and Stanley Kubrick among his heroes.

"We're not afraid of blood and guts," he says, "but most of the great horror films that we love have an element of something topical as well. You don't want to focus on the social comment but it should be there."

Born in Germany, the brothers were raised in Australia, where they graduated from college in the mid-nineties. They began making a living shooting commercials while creating a series of short films with zombie themes.

In 2002, they made their first full feature, Undead , a $1-million horror comedy edited mostly on their home computers. It screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, became a cult success and opened up opportunities for Hollywood work.

But none of film projects they were offered excited their interest. "There was a lot of the fifth-or sixth-in-a-slasher-series sort of thing that looked as though they might go direct to video," Michael says. "We realized if we were going to do what we wanted, we had to sit down and write our own film. We also wanted to do something on a much bigger scale."

So, they stayed at home in Brisbane and wrote. As writers, they typically worked on separate scenes and read each other's work every couple of pages as they progressed. The first draft of the script took a year (they kept their day jobs making commercials). Another year was spent re-writing, lining up producers and trying to get a cast.

Their first success was landing Ethan Hawke for their lead. Hawke, a Tony- and Oscar-nominated actor, expressed initial doubts about doing a vampire film. But after reading the script about modern, civilized vampires who greatly resemble contemporary humans, he signed on. Sam Neill, who plays a CEO vampire, said he joined after reading an early scene describing vampires lining up for their morning coffee, spiked with a shot of blood.

In person, the Spierigs are tall, dark and impossible to tell apart. Even Sam Neill says he usually referred to either one as, "Hey mate," and that worked well enough.

The brothers say they work so closely, it rarely matters who the actors or crew talk to on set. "We do a lot of preparation," says Peter. "We storyboard, we table-script and rehearse as much as we can. We discuss everything so there's not much to discuss once we get on set. I doubt there's ever a circumstance where an actor is steered in different directions. Often, I'll be directing one unit and Michael will be directing the other, but whether we work separately or together, it's the same result."

Through this week, they'll be looking at Daybreakers at the box office to decide what the next film will be, but they definitely don't rule out sequels.

"We have a lot of ideas [for]what happens before the movie starts and a lot about what happens after," says Michael. "We'll see how well it does and then we'll take the next step."