Chuck: Obviously, looking at your resume, you have some background into doing movie stuff, when did you become a writer?
Grevioux: I have been a writer for a couple years now. I had a penchant for writing when I was in college, but I really had no outlet for it, and I didn't have time. I was majoring in microbiology and studying to become a genetic engineer. In fact, I went to grad school for that as well. I actually got into sciences, because of my love for science fiction. I'm also a huge comic book fan.

Chuck: What is interesting is that you were the original writer for Underworld. I have successfully stayed away from all trailers, because I feel that trailers just give away too much lately. Can you tell me what Underworld is about?
Grevioux: This is the logline I used to Len, the director. "What if we take "Romeo and Juliet", but instead of Montagues and Capulets, we have werewolves on one side and vampires on the other?"

Chuck: Now, you came up with this concept because of your love of science fiction, but why these two specific creatures.
Grevioux: Len came to me, and he was telling me that everyone loved Blade, but since there were so many vampire movies out there, a lot of production companies wanted to do a werewolf film. He said, "Look, man, if they're going for this, then what about werewolves?" I said, "Dude, I'm not interested". I told him that, there have only been two good werewolf movies, American Werewolf in London and The Howling. I think The Howling was the first movie to actually use the snout-nosed werewolf creature. Rick Baker was working on that and then John Landis pulled him off of that, and they started working on American Werewolf in London, which was also snout-nosed, but looked more dog-like. So we decided to do that, and I told him that we could make it like a realistic inter-racial love story, and how everyone is afraid of the creation of a biracial child, which is a hybrid in the film.

Chuck: They're enemies, but there's one common focal point for the movie?
Grevioux: I tried to use my science background a little bit. I got rid of all of the mysticism, because I can't get my head around a vampire not being able to see himself in a mirror, just because he's a vampire. With my original script, the werewolves, which we call Lycans in the film, were much more powerful than the vampires one-on-one, but there were more vampires, so it kind of balanced out.

Chuck: In the world you created here, vampires only come out at night, but werewolves, aren't they only in the full moon?
Grevioux: What we did with this one is that I had it so that werewolves can change anytime they feel like it. If you think about it, moonlight is nothing but reflections of sunlight, so why wouldn't werewolves be afraid of that? Because of some quirk in their genetic structure, werewolves change because of moonlight and ultra-violet light doesn't bother them. If you want to get technical about the science, the moonlight is on a different frequency than that of sunlight , which is a bane to vampires, but it causes werewolves to become ultra-feral, meaning they want to kill everybody.

Chuck: And why do these two different breeds hate each other with a passion?
Grevioux: It goes back to Antiquities. The way I created it is that werewolves and vampires had a symbiotic relationship way back in the past, hundreds of years ago. What happens is that werewolves would protect the vampires while they slept during the day from the villagers trying to find them, and at night, when the werewolves would come out, the vampires would watch over them, since they lost their minds and were hyper-feral. What we ended up doing for the movie, after my version, is that the Lycans, who are the werewolves, were actually a slave race of the vampires. The werewolves won their freedom hundreds of years ago, but now the vampires are still hunting them down.

Chuck: What about when you're writing it, do people say to you "this is completely special effects" or "you gotta tone it down"?
Grevioux: The way you have to look at it is that a lot of studios are afraid of it being too expensive. Would an audience understand this? Would an audience understand that? In fact, I had to walk in there with a maquette-a small statue-of a werewolf, because one of the producers didn't want the werewolves to look much different than the vampires. This producer wanted all of the werewolves to look like Sabretooth from The X-Men, and I said, "No".

Chuck: You have some acting credits on your resume. Did you write yourself a part?
Grevioux: I have to write myself a part in everything I do. I play a werewolf, a Lycan enforcer called Raze.

Chuck: Did you get much screen time?
Grevioux: Yes, I did. Not as much as I wanted to and not as much as we were going to put into the script, because the way modern moviemaking sensibilities are concerned, if you don't have a name, then who are you? We didn't want to make the part too big, because if we did, they'd get a rapper like LL Cool J. He's good, and so is Ice Cube, but I wanted to play this, so we had to knock it down so it would be unattractive to any rapper.

Chuck: I think Kate Beckinsale is so sexy. Did you get to work with her?
Grevioux: Yes, I did. She is really cool. She has this-I don't know what the proper term for her British accent is, but it's not Cockney-so you would think that she's this high society girl, but she gets down and dirty.

Chuck: Did you write her character-not knowing it would be her-as a character with sex appeal?
Grevioux: Yes, I did. The model for Selene, was the psychic vampire of the Hellfire Club in the X-Men comics, the Black Queen Selene.

Chuck: So growing up, X-Men was a big part of your life?
Grevioux: Yeah, I'm a big Marvel zombie. Not too into DC's, even though once the DC explosion happened in the early 80s', I started buying more DC Comics: George Perez's Teen Titans, John Byrne's Superman, the Legion with Keith Giffen.

Chuck: What are you reading nowadays?
Grevioux: I like the Hulk. I still like the X-Men, although they get a little wacky sometimes. Love Daredevil.

Chuck: Having this project, Underworld, under your belt now, are you starting to get more offers for writing?
Grevioux: Not quite yet, because it's not out, but I've been going on a lot of meetings for some other stuff I have. In fact, I've started a small comic book company. With things like this, they want to know, "What were you thinking? Where did you get your inspiration?" Comic books. Big heroes of mine growing up were Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and John Buscema, and nowadays, Hollywood looks for properties.. So with that in mind, I created my own universe. The name of the company is Darkstorm, and the only thing I can tell you is that I've had some interest in some of the characters I've created. Hopefully, we'll see something within the coming months or year.

We would like to thank Screen Gems, Kevin Grevioux and The Weekend Warrior for making this exclusive interview possible.