'Byzantium' Producer Says His Gemma Arterton Vampire Film Is Nirvana to the ABBA of 'Twilight'

IFC Films

"We've made a punk vampire film," producer Stephen Woolley says of Byzantium, Interview With the Vampire director Neil Jordan's long-awaited return to the undead. Judging by the leather bustiers we see Gemma Arterton wearing throughout the trailer for the movie (out June 28), "punk" really is the operative word. In fact, in a new interview with the BBC about the movie, Woolley shows how keen he is to distance Byzantium from the mother of all latter day vampire movies: Twilight. "I think this is a little bit more funky than Twilight," Woolley says. "It's Nirvana if Twilight is ABBA."



Byzantium is about a mother and daughter, Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan respectively, who live for 200 years trying to hide who they really are: immortal bloodsuckers. "I wanted to make her very ferocious," Arterton says of her character. "And sensual, and sexual, and strong, and feminine... and all of these things that are scary. This is a movie in which women, who usually fall prey to vampires, are most definitely not their victims.