I recently sat down to chat with Michael and Peter Spierig, the two brothers responsible for Daybreakers (available on DVD, On Demand, Digital Download and game consoles today). A vampire epic starring Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill and Willem Dafoe, Daybreakers is about a future society in which vamps have replaced humans as the dominant race on earth. (You can check out the film's official site here.) Read my full conversation with the Spierigs after the jump.

Can you talk about any footage we didn't see in Daybreakers' theatrical release that will be on the DVD?

Peter: As far as footage with regards to the film, there's nothing different from what was released theatrically. There's no director's cut, because what you saw in the cinema was the director's cut. There were pretty much no deleted scenes. So we've got nothing extra to put on the disc. What we do have… The film has been remastered in 7.1, which is pretty exciting. There's also a really extensive behind the scenes documentary. It's about two hours long on the Blu-ray, it's a little shorter on the DVD, all in hi-definition. It's a real kind of honest account of the making of the film. It's not just a glossed-over featurette. It's a real kind of fly-on-the-wall making-of documentary. Everybody's in it – Willem, Ethan, Sam Neill; all those guys are all in it. Which is pretty exciting. We've also got exclusive to the Blu-ray – this is why everybody should buy Blu-ray and throw away their DVD players – a short film of ours. It was fun for us to do, go back and remaster one of the last short films we ever did and put it on Blu-ray disc. There are also commentary tracks and trailers and all of that sort of stuff as well, storyboard comparisons. We have lots of stuff.

Can you talk about the short film?

Michael: It's exclusive to the Blu-ray. It's called The Big Picture. And it's kind of like a Twilight Zone episode. It's essentially about a girl who watches her life flash before her on television. It's about the decisions she makes or doesn't make, and how they affect her life and what happens at the end of it all. It's kind of fun, but it's also kind of twisted as well. It's a fun little short film.

Having created the world of Daybreakers, have you guys considered returning to it some day?

Peter: Sure. We've actually written a graphic novel. Hopefully it will be published one day. It's sort of the prequel to the film, the back story of how the plague started and what all of our main characters were doing while that happened. It sort of follows them through until the film Daybreakers starts. Hopefully we'll be able to release that at some point. That's sort of what we've been working on in regards to Daybreakers.

Do you feel Daybreakers taught you how to develop a complete world on film?

Michael: Definitely. Especially when we had to build some of it ourselves. It's very tricky to do if you're dealing with a sort of alternate reality situation. You have to be so on the ball when it comes to details, because the details are what really build the world. Every piece of signage and every building in the world. You're used to seeing so much detail in our world that an alternate universe needs that level of detail. It's very complicated.

Do you guys prefer the worlds of sci-fi, fantasy and horror – or do you regard all genres equally?

Peter: We've always been drawn to sci-fi, horror and fantasy. But we like all genres. I mean, we certainly grew up watching everything. So we're not specific to horror films, and certainly some of the things we're developing at the moment are not horror. But we have a real passion for horror films, and we'll certainly continue to do more horror films in the future. But hopefully we'll do other genres as well.

Considering all the detail and work that went into Daybreakers, what was the most challenging aspect of it?

Michael: I think the most challenging thing always, with every kind of film, is how to maximize your budget and ensure that the majority of it spent is there on the screen. It was so hard to get that scope and scale to the budget we had. Often our solution was that we had to do a large chunk of the visual effects ourselves, like what we did on Undead. It's not something that we wanted to do, but we had to do on this picture out of necessity. But the biggest challenge is always maximizing the money and trying to make the most out of what you have.

Would your Daybreakers graphic novel revolve around Ethan Hawke's character?

Peter: Yes, it revolves around all of them. But Ethan's obviously the central character, yes. It takes place ten years before the film starts. And then it leads all the way up the film starting.

In making the film, how much back story did you create?

Peter: The majority of what we've written, as far as the graphic novel's concerned, was written before we started the film. Certainly things have evolved and expanded, now that we've had the opportunity to go back and look at the film. But a lot of it was written before.

Michael: We wrote a very detailed timeline of events about how this world could have evolved after the plague hit and how the plague actually hit and spread and where it all came from. It was all very, very detailed. We thought about how much we could put in the movie, and it was very tricky, because we were already on a very limited budget. The focus of the film shouldn't be the plague and we didn't want to tell that story in a quick montage of news footage. We wanted to tell it in much more detail. If we had more resources, the movie could have been two hours longer, and we could have told that story, but maybe it will work perfectly for another medium, or another movie.

How did you manage to get final cut as first-time feature filmmakers?

Peter: Well, first of all, this is an independent film. It's distributed by Lionsgate, and Lionsgate is very filmmaker friendly. They're not pushing you to make it PG. Lionsgate's embraced R-rated horror movies. That was never an issue. I think that they've always been supportive of us in terms of letting us do what we want to do. They were heavily involved in final script edit, and that sort of thing. And also they saw the animatics that we did, they knew what we were planning on doing, so as long as we stuck to the budget they basically left us alone. Also, we shot in Australia, and it takes them fourteen hours to get here. That makes it tough for anybody to come and visit us. That was a good thing as well. [Laughs.]

Will your next project be shot in Australia?

Michael: I hope so. I think so. It's always whatever makes financial sense, and Australia is still cheap, and we have great rebates here, and great locations and studios. We also have lots of great actors here as well. So it makes a lot of sense to shoot in Australia. You guys just have to sort out your economy. [Laughs.]

Right. I'll see what I can do about that. [Laughs.] Vampires are obviously hot right now, but there does seem to be room for different interpretations. On the one hand, there's the more vicious portrayal in your film, 30 Days of Night, and Thirst, and on the other hand there's Twilight, True Blood and Vampire Diaries. What's the commonality that accounts for their continued success?

Peter: I think vampires have always been around. They're the oldest movie monster really. I think that there's something sexy about vampires, as opposed to werewolves, unless you like hairy men. [Laughs.] But with vampires, there's the appeal of biting someone on the neck and the sort of sexual nature of some of those things. Vampires are also generally intelligent. If you think about most vampire movies, they have vampires that are intelligent or strong or brave or make big sacrifices. All that stuff's appealing. Whereas zombies, they're eating people's brains or they're pretty disgusting. Apparently they're vegetarians too.

In real life, what are your greatest fears?   

Michael: Sharks. Spielberg screwed me up for life.

Peter: Drowning I think is a good one.

Has all that water surrounding Australia fed those fears?

Michael: Exactly.

All the more reason to come shoot in Hollywood. [Laughs.]

Peter: You just need to fix that economy. [Laughs.]

Oh, we will. Of course there are different kinds of sharks up here.

Michael: Those are a lot more dangerous! [Laughs.]

Thank you both for your time. It was great speaking with you.

Michael: Thank you.

Peter: Thanks.