12:00 AM, 18-OCTOBER-06

Henriksen Up For New Dark

Lance Henriksen, one of the original stars of the cult 1987 vampire film Near Dark, reacted with glee when SCI FI Wire informed him that dirctor Michael Bay's production company, Platinum Dunes, had secured the rights and was planning a remake. "Oh, man, I hadn't heard that," Henriksen said in an interview. "It's one of my favorites, Near Dark. If they were smart, what they would do is get a hold of [Henriksen's co-stars] Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein and me, and do something that starts as a prequel to Near Dark. They need to have a conversation with us, because, man, Billy Paxton and I have been talking about this, about what we would do, if we did a prequel. And really great stuff came up. So it would be very wise of them to connect with us."

Near Dark, co-written and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, was a vampire-western that starred Adrian Pasdar as Caleb, a freshly turned vampire who doesn't fit in with his new clan of hillbilly bloodsuckers that included Henriksen as Jesse, Paxton as Severen, Jenny Wright as Mae and Goldstein as Diamondback.

Henriksen said that he and Paxton are "as hot as ever to work on it. We all had so much fun doing Near Dark. We really created a lot of it, right there on the set. So put out a message, man. Tell them we're sitting by the side of the road, waiting for them to drive by, if you know what I mean."

Henriksen's credits include 50-plus horror and SF films, television movies and television series, including Aliens and Millennium.

Platinum Dunes will also produce remakes of The Changeling and The Birds as part of a three-year, first-look deal with Rogue Pictures, the genre division of Universal-based Focus Features. Universal, Rogue and Focus are all owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Ian Spelling