Goyer, who also serves as an Executive Producer, says that he "envisioned a trilogy of films" when he first wrote Blade, so consequently while writing, he left himself a couple of "outs." "One of the outs we left ourselves was that you don't actually see Kris Kristofferson's character, Whistler, on camera taking a bullet to his head. You hear the gun shot but you don't actually see what happens.

Goyer and Frankfurt both admired director Guillermo del Toro and believed his dark sensibilities to be ideal for Blade II. Frankfurt first met del Toro when Frankfurt's design company, Imaginary Forces, did the title sequences for Mimic. "I admired Mimic and got to know Guillermo through that film," says Frankfurt. "Both David Goyer and I have been fans of his since Cronos and were enthusiastic about him coming on board. Guillermo is such a visual director and has a very strong sense of how he wants a movie to look. When you sign on with someone like Guillermo you're not going to tell him what the movie should look like, you're going to let him run with it."

Adds Goyer, "Guillermo has been a friend of mine for years and he knew I was writing Blade II. I kept saying to him 'when I'm done we're going to be coming for you."'

Everyone was unanimous in wanting Blade II to be much scarier than the first. Frankfurt says, "Guillermo understood what worked in the first movie and was very excited about keeping that kind of baseline and amplifying it in places, but then also bringing what he does best - to make it really, really scary."

Like Gayer, del Toro also has an enormous passion for comic books. "Guillermo was weaned on comic books, as was I," says Gayer. "I was a huge comic book collector... my brother and I had about twelve thousand comic books that we assembled when we were kids, so I know my background."

del Toro was very careful not to alter the script too much as the idea had already been created by Gayer and Snipes. "I wanted the movie to have a feeling of both a comic book and Japanese animation," says the director. "I resurrected those sources and viewed them again. I dissected most of the dailies from the first movie; I literally grabbed about four boxes of tapes and one by one saw every single tape from beginning to end until I perfectly understood where the language of the first film came from. I studied the style of the first one and I think Norrington used a tremendous narrative style. His work is very elegant."

Stepping back into Blade's shoes was a challenge Wesley Snipes relished. "I love playing this role. It's fun as an actor to test your skills at doing a sequel, to see if you can recreate something that you did," Snipes says. Peter Frankfurt adds, "Wesley is Blade; so much of the character was invented by Wesley and his instincts are so spot on. He takes his fighting, his weapons and attitude very seriously. He's incredibly focused, but he's also very cool and fun."

"Wesley knows Blade better than David Gayer, better than me, better than anyone else involved in the franchise," adds del Toro. "He instinctively knows what the character would and wouldn't do, and every time he twists something around, something better would come out."

Once again serving as a producer, Snipes has been very much involved in the film from the beginning, "from the script, to the day to day goings on, to the choreography of the fight scenes.

For Snipes, working with del Toro was a great experience. "I like his passion," says the actor. "I'm in awe of his stamina, the fact that he loves this movie and he has put one hundred and ten percent of his life and time into it. He has very clear ideas of what he's looking for, a great eye, great sense of timing and he's comfortable, open and talented enough to be a true collaborator. I would love to work with him again and I think what he's doing in this film is fantastic."

Snipes was also inspired by the darker feel del Toro brought to the film. "It's like being a little kid in a haunted house," says Snipes. "As an actor, you see these films and think 'wow! I'd love to be in a movie like that,' and now I get the opportunity to do it in this one.., and with a guy who is very good at it. When we met in New York and Guillermo showed me his ideas for the weapons and the idea for the Reapers, I thought, 'Any guy that can think of something like that deserves to direct this movie!"'

Snipes underwent extensive training for this physically demanding role. With a number of complicated fight scenes in the film, getting the choreography right called for top stunt coordinators. Snipes had worked with Jeff Ward since Ward first became Snipes' stunt double twelve years earlier. "Jeff is one of the key elements of the success of the first Blade and he brings an uncanny instinct for fights and choreography that is at the same time street and very real and at the same time, very beautiful," says del Toro.

Through their friendship and collaboration over the years, Snipes and Ward developed a relationship that carries through on each project. "We're teammates, partners, and together we come up with the structure and he executes it," says Snipes. "He's a great martial artist too. If you put us together in a room, and then add Clay (Donohue Fonitnet), my stunt double, and we're all together, it's ridiculous!"

del Toro also enlisted castmember and famed Hong Kong fight coordinator, Donnie Yen (Fist of Fury, Iron Monkey), to help choreograph what del Toro wanted to be predominantly wire-free fighting. "Donnie Yen is one of my most admired martial arts actors and artists from the Hong Kong films he has done," says the director. "His stuff is usually a little more whimsical - we actually had to tame him down a little because Blade's fighting style is not acrobat; it's more street. It's very violent, very direct and hard punching. But I absolutely loved the stuff Donnie Yen choreographed. I think the combination of Jeff and Donnie was extremely successful."

However, del Toro also adds that there was a "third sort of ghost choreographer in the movie, and that was Wesley. Wesley listens to everybody's ideas - the two choreographers, the visual stuff I want to do - and then he brings in what I call the 'Bladeness.'"

When it came time to assemble the supporting cast, the filmmakers were first and foremost determined to bring Kris Kristofferson's Whistler back for the sequel. "From the moment we decided to do the second film, we knew Whistler had to come back,". Snipes says. "Blade is a lone warrior and Whistler serves as a good guide, teacher and confidant." Adds David Gayer, "When Kris signed up for the second film we were elated. It's a much meatier role for him this time around. And Kris and Wesley have great chemistry between them."

"I'm very grateful to be involved and very pleased to be working with Guillermo," says Kristofferson. "He brings an interesting dimension to this one. There is more depth and dimension to the different characters in this film than a lot of action films. Between Guillermo and Wesley there are some brilliant ideas going on."

Luke Goss, who rose to fame around the world in the pop duo Bros, plays Blade's chief nemesis, the fearsome Reaper named Nomak. "He's a villain with issues, which is kind of fun," says Goss, who trained for three months for the intense fight sequences in the film, including going up against Blade. "Wesley is very serious when he works and he knows what he wants," says Goss. "Anyone who takes their job that seriously and anyone who's that focused can only help you. It pulls you into the moment. When you see him, when he's not working, he's just a really friendly, giving guy who doesn't embrace the whole idea of hierarchy. I get on really well with him. But when you walk on the set, it was just do the scene and do the best you can."

The film, which begins where Blade left off, in Moscow, was shot entirely in industrial warehouses in the suburbs of Prague, Czech Republic. del Toro wanted Blade to exist in a decadent Eastern European city like Prague to differentiate the experience from the Blade universe in America. "The very first idea for Prague was exclusively an economic one," says the director. "But I also thought it made sense as the first one ended in Moscow to continue in Prague. So we went for the abandoned industrial kind of city but also tried to give it a goth-tech look."

"The artisans in Eastern Europe are so amazing," says David Goyer. "The sets are gorgeous and in terms of scope they are much bigger than the first film."

When it came to production design both Del Toro and Gayer had one person in mind, Carol Spier. "I think Carol is one of the best production designers in the business," says Goyer. del Toro, who worked with Spier on Mimic, adds, "Carol has a way of making even the most outlandish set concept seem real. After Mimic we developed a sort of ESP between us. We have a shorthand of communication. I make little doodles and sketches and she understands exactly what I mean. I knew I needed someone that is a flawless, tireless workhorse. She is such a worker and hard thinker."

Spier was more than happy to continue her working relationship with del Toro. "Guillermo is quite wonderful to work with because he has a very good vision and a very good eye," says the acclaimed production designer who also shares a history with director David Cronenberg on such films as M. Butterfly, Crash and eXistenZ. "He's an artist himself so it's great to work with someone who can visualize."

Spier traveled to Prague in November 2000 to begin work and was soon creating the type of sets that del Toro and Goyer had envisioned. The crew was to build a total of ten enormous but very different sets in seven locations. "Guillermo wanted it to look like a comic book, so we made everything a little more exaggerated," says the production designer. "Everything is larger than it would normally be. That's the unifying vision from set to set -- everything is gigantic. I can't even begin to tell you the number of pounds and truck loads of cement and plaster that went into making the sewer sets."

"Carol's ability to translate and absorb Guillermo's vision into structure was amazing," says Frankfurt. "She pulled off some incredible stuff in a very condensed time frame. It's so much fun to see how delighted Guillermo is by what she does."

Costume designer Wendy Partridge worked with Spier to create costumes that would echo the strange new world del Toro envisioned. "I truly loved that in Wendy's portfolio she had done a Samurai movie and an epic," says del Toro. "I knew how good she was at creating a look from another time and geography; I also knew that she would be able to handle the amount of wardrobe we needed. Those two things were very attractive to me.

Partridge adds, "It was important to have a congenial look and to carry through some of the feeling from the original film but still allow for artistic movement. We wanted to make Blade look a little more high tech, ensuring his original style was maintained but enhancing it a bit. One of the things that was difficult throughout the whole movie and particularly Blade's costume was dealing with black. So my biggest challenge was creating a thousand different blacks; you can actually make an infinite number."

The fun parts for Partridge were some of the more radical elements of the script and creating the individual look of each member of the Bloodpack. "You're not frozen in a time period," she notes. "There's a little Japanese element, a little Hussar element, there's futuristic. Chupa has a bit of a crusade war look and there are elements of Goth and whimsy; for example, Verlaine's costume has feathers. I think that's the fun of doing something like this, there's no set groove."

Director of photography Gabriel Beristain was surprised by del Toro's call. Like the director, he is Mexican-born, but Beristain has spent much of his film life in England, where his first international film was Caravaggio. "Gabriel shot two of my favorite looking films, Dolores Claiborne and Caravaggio," del Toro explains. "I met with Gabriel and basically said, 'Let's make the movie as beautiful as Caravaggio but as a kick-ass action movie."

del Toro and Beristain met, at length, to discuss the visual look of the film. It wasn't until del Toro showed Beristain a comic book of Hellboy that it all started to come together. "He gave me this book and the cover was the main character of Hellboy against a yellow, dark night sky - an amber." That was the look that would follow through. "We started creating a look that was not conventional, we started breaking certain rules and to give the film a comic book look without being overtly comic book. We were doing a Magritte, looking for colors and images that were quasi surreal in terms of colors and textures - yet unassuming." del Toro adds, "When we were discussing the style of the movie I wanted it to be dark but with real chiaroscuro and a real sense of style."

"Guillermo is not the type of director you impose your style on - he has his own style and I translate it," says Beristain. "I've seldom found any directors as talented and quick as Guillermo. His mind works at a tremendous speed and he has a clear visual idea of what he wants."

del Toro worked with Beristain and the visual effects team to create what he calls "L Cam" - a liberated camera that moves in ways normal cameras can't. "We go with some of the action to places," he explains, "following the characters in ways that a normal camera would just simply not be able to do - like a shot of Wesley Snipes running down a corridor four stories above the floor, and then he makes a 200 foot drop, and the camera follows the bullet he shoots 60 feet away from him."

The visual and special effects play a large part in the film, with both teams headed by Oscar winners: Nick Allder, Special Effects Supervisor, Oscar winner for Alien; and Nick Brooks, Visual Effects Supervisor, Oscar winner for What Dreams May Come.

Allder put together his crew, both English and Czech, relatively quickly for a movie this size, shipping over eighty tons of equipment from the UK alone. The crew's task would be to create a live action visual representation of del Toro's sketches. "I met our wonderful illustrious director who said 'everything I want to do is comic book and everything's got to be big."' That included big explosions and multiple gunshots. "We have like two hundred bullet hits going off around one of the stunt guys and I think he had like 52 bullet hits on him alone," says Allder. "That's the kind of thing Guillermo wants to see.

As filming continued they were constantly developing new techniques — and substances. "We've made gallons and gallons of blood. We've had orange blood, amber blood," Allder notes.

del Toro's ideas for the Reapers derived from organic sources, "what I call the National Geographic approach to design," he jokes, "which is, 'let's reference exclusively from real-life animals, instead of other movies." For the Reapers specifically, del Toro was drawn to "the idea of having a thing have a mouth that occupied almost half of its face. What would happen if a leech in its function is not worried about its features. You cannot see a handsome leech or an ugly leech; they're all just there to do what they do, extract the blood. So we came up with a concept for a creature that would keep its feeding apparatus hidden and protected until it was time to feed."

del Toro's mandate throughout was to realistically blend both the comic book nature of the movie into the visual effects and makeup, an effort epitomized by a huge fireball sequence carried out on the 'sewer set' once the main crew had moved on to the next location. Brooks says, "We call it the Hiroshima sequence because my job was to create mass death and destruction."

Brooks and Allder took in a very small crew and a high-speed camera and let off blasts of fire, made up of liquid propane, down the sewer tunnels. Obviously when building the sewer sets, Spier was careful to make them strong enough to support these pyro blasts. Allder says "I had lots of discussions with Nick (Brooks) about the look his was trying to get. So I made this gas mortar that fires liquid propane, which is quite frightening. It gives off a huge blast but it does look quite spectacular."

One unifying concept among the ranks of cast and crew was to make a film that would be as fun to watch as it was to make. "It's not meant to be anything but a really fun live action comic book - a beautiful, shiny thing that moves and constantly amusing us," says Allder. "Part of that is to have special effects integrated into the action in a different way than you normally see. We are fusing digital effects with makeup, with prosthetics, with puppets, all into a single scene that keeps the eye of the audience guessing. I think a little more sleight of hand went into planning these effects. This movie is very much a ride."

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