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Late March, the new Underworld crew officially assembled.
Director, cinematographer, costume and makeup teams—everyone rolled in fast.
Lake Shore Pictures pushed the prep like it was on rocket fuel. Gary Lucchesi looked like he wanted to start shooting the next damn day.
They auditioned a few guys for the male supporting role and landed on a decent-looking but unknown British actor named Ben Barnes. Early twenties—actually two years older than Raphael.
Nobody cared. Everyone knew the movie lived and died on Raphael and Kate. The guy was just there to move the plot.
They skipped Europe for the shoot.
Raphael sat down with the director three times as producer and they all agreed: film in the States.
The main market was America anyway. Shooting overseas only sounded fancy; it didn't save money and the tax breaks were better at home.
Stephanie Meyer heard about it and called personally, pushing hard for Portland, Oregon.
She swore the constant rain and thick forests were perfect for vampires—she'd pictured the whole story there while writing her outline.
Raphael listened politely, said "We'll consider it," and hung up.
The rewritten Underworld was already very different from the original Twilight books. No reason to copy the locations beat for beat.
In the end the crew settled on Asheville, North Carolina. Ancient forests, nineteenth-century buildings, killer tax incentives—everything they needed.
While the production ramped up, Stephanie delivered the first draft of the script.
The night Raphael got it, he locked himself in his hotel room and read the whole thing straight through.
By the time he finished, he felt physically unwell.
In this version Selene (Kate) was the crown princess of one of the five great vampire families—the future ruler of her entire race.
The werewolves had been at war with her clan for over a century. Bodies piled up, hatred ran bone-deep.
Raphael's character, Edward, was half-human, half-werewolf. His real father was Lucian, the werewolf alpha.
Twenty years earlier Lucian was mortally wounded in a clash with the vampires, stumbled onto a rainy roadside, and was saved by Edward's human mother.
They fell in love, had Edward, but Lucian eventually vanished to keep them safe.
Edward's mother raised him alone until his eighteenth birthday, when the full moon triggered his first shift and he accidentally hurt her. On her deathbed she told him the truth.
Devastated, Edward dropped out of college and moved to a quiet little town to hide.
That's where he met Selene—also hiding out.
They bonded over shared interests, became friends, then lovers. Neither knew the other's real identity at first.
Edward's mixed blood gave him a natural scent-masking ability (the vampires literally couldn't smell the wolf on him), and he had no clue vampires even existed. To him she was just the love of his life—a small-town guy completely head-over-heels.
Until his half-brother led a werewolf raid on Selene. In the chaos Edward shifted, saved her, and the truth exploded.
But it was too late. They'd already slept together. Selene was pregnant.
Vampire women lose most of their power during pregnancy—that's why she couldn't fight off the wolves.
To protect his woman and unborn child, Edward took Selene on the run. The first movie ends with both races hunting them. Cornered on a cliff, they jump—hand in hand—while armies clash below.
Raphael actually wondered if Stephanie had studied wuxia films in secret. How else did she nail the "jump off a cliff while armies fight" vibe so perfectly?
Second film opens with them being rescued. Selene loses the baby.
Grief turns to rage. She swears revenge on everyone who hurt her child. Edward comforts her while digging into the conspiracy: his half-brother and the vampire elders had teamed up. They refused to let a half-breed child be born.
The second movie climaxes with Edward versus his brother.
The brother isn't a cartoon villain—he has reasons and beliefs. He killed their father because he saw Lucian as weak. He wants werewolves to rise and crush the vampires. His motivation actually makes sense.
When Edward kills him it feels tragic, not triumphant—two belief systems colliding.
Third film: they find the original ancestor of both races, an ancient immortal who started as a human.
With his help their powers skyrocket. They stop the thousand-year war, broker peace, and finally get their happy ending.
Threaded through all three movies are dozens of side plots—Edward's complicated feelings toward Lucian (from resentment to understanding), Selene's bloody rise from turned human to crown princess, etc.
Stephanie even emailed that she already had a rough outline for a prequel spin-off about Selene's origin story if the trilogy hit.
Raphael finished the script and just sat there feeling… off.
The backbone was still Romeo-and-Juliet, but every single beat was cranked to maximum soap-opera levels.
Love, hate, betrayal, sacrifice, impossible romance—it was a nonstop emotional car crash.
He actually considered flying to Phoenix just to ask her how the hell she came up with something this gloriously cheesy.
He resisted.
Because cheesy or not… people were going to eat it up.
He just wondered if, somewhere across the ocean, Guo Jingming might read this one day and get inspired to write his own masterpiece of melodrama.
---
The next day Raphael handed the script to the director.
Francis Lawrence—early thirties, Austrian-American, former MTV guy with solid camera work and years until Constantine, I Am Legend, and The Hunger Games made him famous.
He read it with the same twisted expression Raphael had worn, then finally looked up and said,
"If we shoot this right, it's gonna burn."
Raphael agreed.
"Cheesy is fine as long as the audience buys the ticket."
The whole crew held another meeting and reached the same conclusion: the soap was secondary. Focus on the epic vampire-werewolf war scenes.
Because both the original Underworld and Twilight had action that could only be described as… limp.
Raphael made his stance clear in the story meeting.
"The cliff-jump finale in the first movie—I want a real spectacle. Not just two people jumping. I want both armies facing off on the cliff edge. The lovers trapped between thousands of soldiers, no way out, then they embrace and leap."
He added quietly to himself, I've seen enough movies in my last life. We're not doing bare-minimum action.
The director's eyes lit up.
"We can do that."
He was already scribbling notes.
Raphael kept going.
"Second movie—the brother fight. He's not a mustache-twirling villain. He has ideology. He killed their father because he saw weakness. He believes werewolves should dominate. Make his motivation believable."
"The moment Edward kills him should feel tragic. Not good triumphing over evil—two worldviews smashing together."
Francis nodded.
Raphael looked at him.
"Action directors lined up?"
Francis said he had a Korean team—great at tight, brutal close-quarters fights.
Raphael thought for a second.
"Bring in a team too. Chengjia Ban or Yuenjia Ban. We need someone who can handle massive battle scenes."
Francis blinked.
"Two action directors?"
"Exactly."
Raphael said, "Koreans handle the indoor, hand-to-hand stuff. crew does the outdoor army battles. Two separate units, two separate styles."
Francis hesitated.
"Budget…"
Raphael waved it off.
"If we need more money, we spend it. If the movie hits, nobody will care. If it flops, the money we saved won't stop the bad reviews."
Francis shut up.
Truth was, Raphael would've preferred an all-team. Korean action in 2003 was still copying Hong Kong cinema. But Chengjia and Yuenjia Ban weren't cheap anymore—The Matrix had jacked their rates sky-high.
After the meeting Raphael went back to his hotel and kept flipping through Stephanie's script.
He had to admit the woman knew how to write characters.
Edward's stubborn "I'll burn the world for her" vibe and Selene's explosive maternal instinct were nailed.
He grabbed his phone and texted Philip.
[Lock Stephanie down. All future works get first refusal to R.L. Productions.]
Philip replied instantly.
[Done.]
Raphael didn't care if she wrote anything else.
For pocket change he'd just secured a cash-cow talent. In his book, that was a hell of a deal.