The film is about Elsa and Clive, two young rebellious scientists, defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA to create a new organism. Named Dren, the creature rapidly develops from a deformed female infant into a beautiful but dangerous winged human-chimera, who forges a bond with both of her creators - only to have that bond turn deadly.

Nelson Cabral (BD): This has been a pet project of yours specifically for quite some time. Why Splice and why now?

Vincenzo Natali: Why splice? Because years ago there was this thing I saw a photo of, its called (something)mouse, it was, by all appearances, a human ear on its back. It actually was a plastic armature under a kind of skin that could be grafted onto human beings. It was such a crazy, shocking weird image that I was inspired to write a story about genetic splicing

BD: And you saw that when you were a kid, or just recently?

V.C: No, it was about 95? 96? And in, why now? I couldn’t really tell you for sure. It has something to do with the way technology has evolved, its something people are really interested in And then it has to do with the involvement of Guerlmo del Toro and Steve Hogan.

BD: Now that you pretty much know what the creature is gonna look like, is it what you envisioned it to be? Or was there a lot of play on the behalf of K+B and Core and all the other effects teams that were behind it?

V.C: It’s exactly what I want, but it’s taken me and many artists to come up with the design over many years.

Steven Hoban: It’s been almost 10 years

BD: And its not surprising that the two of you teamed up considering all the work you’ve done together in the past. I noticed in a lot of your films, you tend to keep your cast small. This doesn’t appear to be any different. Do you just like the claustrophobic aspect of it, or you just find it easier/more intimate to work with a smaller crew?

V.C: Or I don’t have any money! I knew when I came up with the idea of Splice that the creature was going to be the star of the film, and it was going to be an expensive star, so I wasn’t going to have a big cast and a lot of locations, it was going to be a small film. But then, that’s also I think what makes the movie special, because it really is an emotional monster film, and it really is about the relationships between the two scientists and the creature that they make.

BD: Yes I read a story about there being a lot of disturbing intimate scenes with the creature. Is this supposed to be a disgusting thing, or just an off-placed beautiful thing, kind of like that Chris Cunningham’s Bjork video. Its sensual, its pretty, but it’s a little off-kilter.

V.C: I think it depends on your orientation, maybe Steve could comment on it!

S.H: It’s definitely in the eye of the beholder.

BD: I don’t think there’s a fetish for cross-species sex

V.C/S.H: Until now!

S.H: One of the things that excited me about the basic idea of the film is that although were dealing with something that is a very contemporary technology, the concept of hybrids has existed for thousands of years. And the notion of falling in love with or even having relations with a creature that is not human has existed since ancient myth. Its much like Cube for me, was a similar thing, where we took the concept of a maze, which is an ancient concept, and put it in a technological setting. It’s the same thing with Splice; it really has its roots in mythology.

BD: Let’s lay to rest a rumour. People are saying this was originally intended as a sequel to Cube.

V.C: Sequel?

S.H: Really, that’s a rumor? Some people have been saying it’s originally intended to be a follow-up.

BD: I’ve come across notions of sequel and I’ve read animated.

S.H: You’ve read this stuff?

V.C: It was supposed to be an animated sequel but then I decided to turn it into a live action follow up. (laughs.) It has no relationship to Cube whatsoever.

BD: Do you think this will stir up any controversy about stem-cell research, genetic, any kind of bio-engineering?

V.C: I think it absolutely will, because people will talk about it more. It’s automatically a controversial issue. Forgetting what happens in our movie, but it’s a controversial issue, and this is just gonna allow people to talk about it more. I think there’s a position this movie takes on it, it takes a particular position on whether man should or should not be messing with this kind of thing, and that’s controversial. I think the movie is open enough to interpretation that it’s a little bit ambiguous, what its position is on genetic engineering. It has a position on how we deal with that technology, but I wouldn’t want this film in any way inhibit people from doing genetic research.

BD: The characters Elsa and Clive are described as Rock and Roll bio-geneticists? Care to elaborate?

V.C: Yeah, I sort of saw it as the natural evolution of whats happening with computer programming. A lot of really young people do computer programming, they deal with really sophisticated technology, really sophisticated hardware. I’m sure that that is happening currently in the bio-technology field as well. It just seemed like the appropriate thing. On some level, the movie is about deciding to have a family, and what you do with becoming a parent, so it had to be about young people so Clive and Elsa are sort of, as rock and roll geneticists, are ill equipped to become parents, and that’s what makes it exciting to watch them have a mutant kid.

BD: So the film is slated for sometime in 2009 right?

V.C: The film will be released sometime in 2009.