Director Taika Waititi has promised there will be blood in the snow at next month’s Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
His latest vampire mockumentary, What We Do in the Shadows, filmed in Wellington with old mate Jemaine Clement, has been selected to premiere at the prestigious United States ski resort festival.
“On the bright side, our silly little vampire film got into Sundance,” Waititi tweeted.
“There will be blood in the snow.”
The feature-length movie is based on a 2006 short film of the same name by Waititi and Clement, about a group of vampires flatting in Wellington who try to fit into normal society while continuing to feed on humans.
Sundance says the mockumentary “follows the struggles of a group of New Zealand-based vampires to understand modern society and adapt to the ever-changing world around them”.
Only 200 films are chosen for the festival each year, from nearly 12,000 submissions.
More than 50,000 people attend screenings.
Waititi and Clement wrote and directed the film and will also star in it, alongside Kiwi actors and comedians Jonny Brugh and Cori Gonzales-Macuer.
And Waititi has assured fans the vampires won’t be anything like the chiselled young men typical of the Twilight genre.
“No. Vampires aren’t sexy. That’s what people keep forgetting,” he told an American film industry publication.
“People don’t realise that. The movies have totally got it wrong.
“Dead people aren’t sexy. Everyone knows that, except for Hollywood.”
Filming of the blood-curdling comedy took place in Wellington during September last year.
It will screen at Sundance’s “Park City at Midnight” section, which is a late-night, out-of-competition part of the programme.
Waititi and Clement both studied drama at Victoria University, before forming the comedy duo The Humourbeasts.
It will be Waititi’s first feature since Boy.
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