Niles talks Dark

If you were a fan of the 30 DAYS OF NIGHT movie, then you might be up for some details on the sequel DARK DAYS from writer Steve Niles.

The nice guy of horror comics, Niles had this to say about the storyline, “The first movie established the vampires fear of exposure, that the fact that nobody believes in them is their greatest strength. So now, we just had to accelerate that. In the new movie, we had to start with what happened in New Orleans. We just moved that storyline from the original book to the beginning of this new one. There’s some evidence of what happened in Barrow and Stella Oleson is out there trying to spread the word just like in the Dark Days comics.”

I really loved 30 DAYS, but was curious if the vampires would be striking up any conversations since they did in the comic series. Niles confirmed, “Yes. I have them doing what I originally wanted which is speaking all languages.”

This is what he also had to say when asked about changes in the story from book to screen, “Well, the first thing, I have a scene where there’s a plane and with everybody dead on a tarmac from the vampire attack. And Guillermo Del Toro just did it in ‘The Strain’ [novel], which is going to wind up on the screen and I thought, ‘Okay, skip that.’ We’re going to be accused of stealing it from them or vice versa. It’s a big set piece in the novel, so we had to lose that and little adjustments like that. Also, the one character Judith, who’s the woman, we lost her and she had to be replaced with somebody else. I’d say there’s about as many changes as there were from the first graphic novel to the first movie, but not as drastic. We’ll get a lot more of the vampire lore. This is the arc that introduces us a friendly version of those creature things. That was one of the challenges, how do we make one of these guys even remotely sympathetic? It’s going to be a lot of fun.” Hell yes it’s going to be fun, it’s a Niles story.

“Freaks of the Heartland” is another story that is up for the movie treatment with director David Gordon Green (PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, YOUR HIGHNESS) who seems to be everywhere as of late. Niles is currently reading the second draft of the script and even though it’s a a little different from his story he hopes it will all work out. “I think Slade did such a great job on 30 Days of Night. So I’m hoping for the same thing of David Gordon Green. Try to get the work in there, try to make a good horror movie and I’ll be happy.”