iFMagazine has a feature online with Steve right now in which they ask him some slightly different questions than most of his recent “30 Days of Night” interviews.

iF: What is the message of this film?

NILES: In this one, the message is more about enjoyment. I want people to enjoy this movie like we used to enjoy old classic horror movie. I want you to get out of the theater with your heart pounding and all exited. I don’t want to disgust you like some of these terrible horror-torture movies like the SAW and HOSTEL pictures. I hate all of these horror/porn/torture movies, these are not horror movies to me. This one, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is how horror movies should be, fun and entertaining.

Continuing his media blitz, Steve was recently interviewed by Comics2Film about the “30 Days” movie.

C2F: Everyone really seemed committed to the vision that you and Ben put forward in the book.

Niles: That’s David Slade and Sam Raimi. If you read any interview with either of them that’s like their mantra, it’s gotta be like the graphic novel. And each for their own purposes. It’s very funny. David Slade really liked the darkness of it all and wanted to see just how nihilistic and dark he could make this movie. Raimi really fixated on the love story and the characters. And between the two of them they managed to preserve the entire thing. It’s really amazing. And I can just tell you from previous experience, man, Ben and I are lucky as hell

In perhaps the most candid and career encompassing interview he’s ever had, Steve sat down and talked comics, movies and life with Comic Book Resources.

Let’s transport you back to the moment when “30 Days of Night” became an underground sensation. With the release of the TPB, it meant you had arrived because that thing was a huge seller for IDW. That said, what did this arrival mean to your comics career? Following “30 Days of Night” you were still mostly doing creator-owned work.

Well, I had been writing since I was around 13 years old. I had a huge back log of work, including two novels in a drawer, pitches, scripts, ideas, so once somebody gave me half a chance I just dove in. I couldn’t wait. I went a little nuts after “30 Days of Night” hit and up until about five minutes ago I would say yes to everything I was offered, on top of doing all the creator-owned stuff. I kind of lucked out. Some of it worked, some of it did not. But I still love working like that. To me, doing the movie and selling the movie and if the movie’s a success hopefully means it’ll be possible for me to do more work and, honestly, comics is where I want my focus to be.

Alright, so now everybody in Hollywood loves you and the bidding process on the rights begin. At what point did the studios actually get interested?

When the ad in Previews hit. That was so strange. We got so psyched out because everyone was freaking out about the concept and Ted would call me to say, “Retailers are freaking out! They think this is a great concept and would make a great movie.” Then the orders came in and they were shit ! We got like 4,000 orders. Everyone liked the idea, but not enough to buy the book. Then all the hype started and then the orders started to go up. It was the weirdest thing.

When you were pitching the studios, a bidding war broke out, did it not?

Yeah. I believe it boiled down to DreamWorks, MGM and Columbia with Sam Raimi attached. Hearing Sam Raimi’s name for me was all it took.

I was being told amounts and offers and it was crazy. It was pretty much, “We’ll give you a million dollars and a free car!!!!” But when I heard Sam Raimi, my brain basically shut off. I said, “I don’t even know what amount or which studio, just go with Raimi.” Form that point forward, I stepped away from the negotiations and just said, “Let me know how much I’m getting paid.” Like, can I substitute ramen for canned soup finally? [laughs]

Sam Raimi answered a load of questions for reporters at a recent press conference arranged to promote his fledgling Ghost House Pictures production company and it’s flagship movie, “30 Days of Night”.

What interested you about the 30 Days of Night story?

“It seemed like it should’ve been thought of before because it’s so obviously great, that you go up to a place like Barrow, Alaska, where night falls for 30 days and you’ve got to survive that time period with vampires at your throat.

Nevertheless, I’d never heard of it before. It was original. Maybe that’s how great ideas are. They just seem like someone should’ve thought of them before, but I had never heard anything like it. So I was struck by the originality of it, what a great concept it was, the great visuals, but…the thing that really connected me to it were the two characters at the center – Eben and Stella – and their love story.
At Ghost House, we always want to find something that’s new. Recently we’ve been looking in the Far East and their filmmakers and the newer visions that they can bring to films. This was a homegrown picture though, which was very exciting, a homegrown idea. The thing that connected me to it more than all those concepts and cool ideas were those characters that Steve Niles wrote about. I really liked the fact that they were having problems, that they loved each other, that they were real human beings and that it was a love story at its heart. I loved the bookends of how it began with the sunset and ended with the sunrise with the two of them and the journey that they had taken throughout the course of this one long night. Those were the things that I thought made it really new, the attention to the detail of character.”

With an estimated $16 million in ticket sales, “30 Days of Night” was easily the number one movie in America this past weekend!

Chart graphic via Box Office Mojo.

In this Sunday’s LA Times, Steve was asked to list his favorite vampire movies of all time. Much of the list is pretty much what fans of Steve’s work might expect, but there are a few that might take you slightly by surprise!

William Marshall, “Blacula” (1972)

Marshall, who died in L.A. in 2003, is the tallest of our vampire actors at 6-foot-5. His résumé included roles in “The Boston Strangler” (1968) and “Maverick” (1994), and he popped up on TV in “Star Trek,” “Mannix” and as the King of Cartoons on “Pee Wee’s Playhouse.” But he really made his mark as Mamuwalde, the African prince bitten by Dracula in the 1700s and on the loose in the groovy streets of 1970s L.A. Niles said he has no reservations about putting the blaxploitation melodrama on his list: Being a horror fan means accepting a certain measure of schlock. “And I had a ‘Blacula’ poster on my wall for years too.”

“30 Days of Night” opened strong on Friday with an estimated $6,250,000, placing it in an easy first place berth with nearly double the box office of the second place film.

In the final day of 5 Days of Niles, Steve talks about the online “30 Days of Night: Blood Trails” series which just happens to be wrapping things up today, just in time for the big movie opening!

Day 4 of G4’s “5 Days of Niles” features Steve and Blair Butler discussing his various influences as well as Hannibal Lecter action figures.

The Hollywood Reporter is running an article that looks at how “30 Days of Night” is set to reinvigorate the vampire in America by making them scary again, comparing the film with “28 Days Later” and it’s reinvention of the zombie genre.

The movie rejiggers the vampire story in a way that “28 Days Later,” the 2002 horror movie directed by Danny Boyle, reinvented the zombie story. Until then, zombies were slow-moving, brain-eating creatures. Boyle turned them into fast-moving, fury-filled monsters. That movie’s success shook up the cobwebbed genre, with remakes, sequels and imitators flooding the market. “30 Days” could do the same for vampire movies.