At this year's San Diego Comic Con, Bloody Disgusting's BC caught up with PANDORUM producer Paul W.S Anderson and star Antje Traue, who talk about the sci-fi horror thriller arriving in theaters September 25th. Anderson is best known for bringing RESIDENT EVIL to the big screen, along with DEATH RACE, EVENT HORIZON and ALIEN VS PREDATOR.

BD: During the panel, someone had brought up Alien - is it fair to say that your character is Ripley-esque? More importantly - does she kick more ass?

Antje: I definitely kick more ass! But I think it’s really important to not be too one-dimensional about a female action hero. It needs to have a soft side, she needs to be a woman still. That’s what makes it interesting to me.

BD: Paul, you only worked on this as a producer, but as a director you had worked in similar territory with Event Horizon. Did this make you more or less hands on than you’d normally be in your producer role?

Paul: As a producer, I was mainly involved with the development of the project. I read the original script about five years ago, and as soon as I read it I thought “this is a movie I’d really really want to see.” So I was involved in the development, but when they were shooting I was finishing up Death Race, so I wasn’t present during much of the shooting. But I had selected with the other producers, the director Christian Alvart, who’s a talented guy that we were very excited about. And then I was heavily involved in post-production. So I was in and out of the project. But as a producer, I see my job to support the filmmaker, and be there as a resource. If Christian needed a 2nd opinion on something, I’m there with the experience that I’ve got from the movies I made, I would give him that. But never in a way where I would be telling him where to put the camera; that’s not how I would like to be treated as a filmmaker and that is not how I would treat a filmmaker.

BD: You said you were involved with choosing the director, were you just as involved with casting? Did Christian come on before the cast?

Paul: Yes. It’s a consensual thing. We would never insist on an actor that Christian did not want to work with, and neither did he convince us that someone we didn’t like should be in the movie. We all have an equal right to veto during that process, and there are plenty of producers out there who will force an actor down a director’s throat. We didn’t believe in that. And with this cast... who doesn’t want to work with Ben Foster or Dennis Quaid? If you need someone to kick ass, who better than Cung Le to do it? If you want a discovery, we have Antje. So we didn’t have any disagreements when it came to casting. Christian was always a big fan of Ben’s, and I saw him in 3:10 To Yuma, and we literally did the deal with him the week after I saw 3:10 with Jeremy [Bolt], my producing partner. We were so impressed. We always knew the start of the movie was going to be a two-hander; we knew we’d have a movie star for the Dennis role, and someone who could stand up to Dennis, someone younger but who could carry the movie. And that’s what impressed me about Ben in 3:10 to Yuma, he’s right up there with Russell Crowe, even eclipsing him in certain scenes. So we knew he was the right guy for us.

BD: I want to talk about the gore a bit, this is obviously going out with an R rating, but did the MPAA give you any trouble? Will the DVD be unrated?

Paul: I think there might be... I hesitate to say a more “intense” version of the movie on DVD, because the movie’s incredibly intense and very scary. I’ve watched it with an audience twice now, and they are either silent, paying attention - so you can hear a pin drop, or they’re screaming. I think that’s a very good thing. Might be a bit more gory, more bloody. I am very pleased with the version that is going into theaters, and it doesn’t need any more blood, there’s plenty in there already! Antje spent the entire movie covered in shit and blood!

BD: And did you enjoy that?

Antje: It’s not so much about the makeup; it’s about the make-down. Every morning, you come into the makeup chair clean, and walk away covered in blood. It’s not something that happens every day to you, so I was enjoying it at first. But it’s not easy to act when you’re covered in blood, it’s so sticky, so you can’t move right anymore. It’s fun to experience though; I had never done this before.

BD: The first trailer that was going around was much more claustrophobic and quiet, like a haunted house movie. This new one that you just showed was more action packed - so we’re obviously getting a mixture of the two. How is the split in the actual film?

Paul: It alternates. There are times of incredibly scary claustrophobia and then it explodes into action. It’s one of the things I really liked about the movie; it’s relentless. After you’ve come out of the theater you feel like you’ve seen a really intense film.

BD: So both trailers are accurately depicting the film’s tone?

Paul: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a movie that starts very creepy, and then the intensity builds, the scares build. And when you can’t take that anymore, it’s kick-ass action. It almost acts like a release, right? You can do it two ways in a scary movie. One classic model is the Scream model, where you have scares, and you let the tension off by having laughter. What I find more intense, the kind of movies I prefer: you have scares, and then you DON’T let the tension off, you give them relief with action. And you can tell when you look at the actors in Pandorum, they look they’ve been beaten around by a baseball bat for an hour and a half. It’s an intense film.

BD: They didn’t really beat you around with a baseball bat, did they?

Antje: (laughs) I just want to say that under my costume I was covered with bruises everywhere. It’s like I was not even a woman anymore! It was an intense time for me.

BD: Let’s switch to Resident Evil real quick... obviously it’s still in the early stages, but can we expect to see any game characters coming into this one?

Paul: Yes. Characters from the earlier movies will be making an unexpected return, and we’re going to introduce fresh characters from the video game as well. And as far as the creatures, we’re going to lean very heavily on Resident Evil 5. There are some really great ones in there, we’re going to be very inspired by that.

BD: Especially with 5, the series itself has turned more toward the action tone that the films have always had, where they were action movies with horror elements instead of the slower horror type tone of the first couple games...

Paul: I always felt that one of the strengths of the video game franchise - and it has been hugely successful, whereas Tomb Raider, which was kind of running parallel with resident evil, sputtered and died and they’re always talking about trying to resurrect it. And the same with the movie franchise, it ran out of steam after the 2nd film. I think the strength of the video game series, and we tried to put into the movie series, is that the games change. You don’t feel like you’re playing the same thing over and over again, and each time you revisit it, something dramatic has changed. And that’s what we tried to do with the movie as well. They’ve all had action and horror elements: the first one was a much more claustrophobic horror movie because it was all set in the confines of the Hive. The 2nd one we broadened it out, introduced more action, but it still had the intensity of the one night in the one city that they had to escape from. And then the 3rd movie kind of became a post-apocalyptic epic, we changed the scenery completely with the desert setting. And I think that the strength of the film is that you’re never getting the same thing again, which stays true to the games. And that’s what we’ll try to do this time as well. You know, sometimes we get a lot of flack from fans, because they can’t stand the fact that the movies are not slavish recreations of the games, but I think the game series itself does the same thing. Resident Evil 5 is so different than Resident Evil 1, and that’s why it’s a vibrant franchise; they change, they mutate, they evolve. That was the genius when Cameron came and did Aliens; he didn’t do Alien again! He still had the aliens, but he made a different kind of movie. And I was very led by that, and when we were lucky enough to embark on a franchise, I thought we have to do what Cameron did - take the elements and do something different.

BD: On that note, what are you going to bring that’s not only different from the last two films but different than the one you did yourself?

Paul: (laughs) We can talk about that next Comic Con! It will be some familiar things, and some completely fresh things. The one thing I can tell you: we’re doing it in 3D, with Cameron’s Avatar system. Hugely excited for that, and very excited to be working in 3D, it’s a cutting edge technology. It’s almost like making the first sound picture again, or color, or Cinemascope. It’s exciting to be working with the medium.