Daybreakers Breaches $1 Million on Opening Weekend

Coming in third behind James Cameron's Avatar and Mel Gibson's Edge of Darkness, the second film from the brothers Michael and Peter Spierig took in $1,064,244 from a total of 135 cinemas since it opened last Thursday. Daybreakers has also raked in US$ 30 million since it opened in US theaters in January.

Touted as "90% Australian", a cast of which the majority is Australian (Claudia Karvan, Sam Neil, Michael Dorman), filmed in Brisbane and the Gold Coast and featuring Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe, Daybreakers brings the vampire movie back to its roots; none of them glitter, much less walk around in bright daylight or fall in love with human girls.

According to Peter Spierig, the increasing lack of human blood in the film's premise indeed has "parallels to oil, water and other natural resources" although they didn't want to "be patronizing". Obtaining financing for the movie, whose budget was estimated to be $20 million, was also vastly different compared to that of the Spierig's first film.

After having sold their car to finance the filming of Undead in 2003, the brothers managed to obtain local financial backing this time thanks to the interest shown in their film by American film companies. Film companies Screen Australia and Screen Queensland invested $5 million and $1 million respectively in the film's production.