30 DAYS OF NIGHT: DARK DAYS director Ben Ketai took some time out of his schedule to talk to Bloody-Disgusting about the project and their plans for this week’s San Diego Comic-Con (more info here). Like many of us, Ben is heading down to San Diego this week. Along with the cast and writer Steve Niles, they’ll be showing a trailer and possibly a clip as well! Read on for the goods.
Ketai first worked on the 30 DAYS OF NIGHT web series before being asked to direct the sequel by Ghost House head honcho himself, Sam Raimi. “While we were working on the web series, he kind of dangled that carrot,” Ketai tells BD. “[Raimi] said, `This is a universe that you seem to have a grasp on. We’d love to give you a shot to do your first feature.’ So he and Rob Tapert started talking with Steve Niles about us writing it together and then me going on to direct it.”

DARK DAYS picks up about 11 months after the original. “When our story begins, it’s approaching the next sunset for 30 days,” says Ketai. Very similar to the graphic novel, Stella (Kiele Sanchez) comes to Los Angeles to try to convince the world that vampires exist, that her town wasn’t just some tragic oil fire like everyone thought. There were these monsters that showed up and tore the town apart and then burned all the evidence. They think she’s crazy. People think they’re going to hear a survival story and she tells them about vampires so they kind of laugh her off.”

“[Then] she’s approached by a group of survivors all over the country who have experienced similar situations with vampires. They can’t get anyone to believe them either, so they ask Stella to join their group to go hunt the vampires, kill them and exact their revenge.”

Ketai and co. wrapped production at the end of 2009, so its been a lengthy post-process getting the final edit ready. “ We wrapped in November of last year,” Ketai tells BD. “It hasn’t been too rushed of a process in post. We finished on time and it’s all ready to go.”

The moment of truth will come this week when the first scenes from DARK DAYS are unveiled to the Comic-Con faithful. “We’re going to unveil the trailer and we’re going to be doing a panel Friday night at 7:30,” says the writer/director. “And we’re discussing right now showing a scene from the movie. We haven’t quite figured out what we’re going to show yet, but we’re hoping to show a clip of some sort, like a two minute scene.”

If all goes well, this could be the beginning of further cinematic explorations of Niles’ dark, nasty vampire world. But Ketai says that decision won’t be made until after the release of DARK DAYS. “I think it’s just a wait and tell like it was with the first movie. There’s obviously a plethora of material out there, from Return to Barrow on to the novels and other graphic novels, there’d be plenty of stuff to pull from. We’ve talked about how cool it would be to jump right into Return to Barrow, but business-wise I think they want to wait.”

30 DAYS OF NIGHT: DARK DAYS is slated for release on Blu-ray and DVD October 5th, 2010.