Trivia / Blood & Chocolate (2007)

• Box Office Bomb: The film had a budget of $15 million and was released in 1200 theatres, but only managed to gross $6.3 million. It was heavily panned by critics and was cast out of theatres after nine weeks; the fact it was an In Name Only adaptation didn't do it any favors.
• Creator Killer: The failure of the film put director Katja von Garnier's career in limbo for six years. She had a strong commercial comeback with the successful Windstorm (Ostwind) trilogy, but has yet to direct an English language production again.
• Dawson Casting: Largely averted with Agnes Bruckner as Vivian (Bruckner was 21, portraying a 19 year old), but played straight with Hugh Dancy as Aiden (he's indicated be around the same age as Vivian, yet Dancy was 31 during filming).
• Disowned Adaptation: She wasn't hugely scathing and expressed hope it could work on its own merits, but Annette Curtis Klause made it clear in a 2006 interview that she wasn't keen on the many changes made to the story and sympathized with disappointed fans. She particularly disliked that the film changed the story's setting and character ages, feeling that it "kind of negates the whole point of the plot—werewolves could be sitting right next to you in your high school homeroom". Klause had little involvement in the film's production and wasn't kept in the loop by filmmakers, relying on the internet for updates.
• Dyeing for Your Art: The actors playing the werewolves had to wear special contacts that Agnes Bruckner described as "like having tunnel vision".
• Fake American: English-born Hugh Dancy plays American Aiden. It's especially obvious when his accent slips.
• Fake Nationality: Although the story's setting is moved to Romania for the film, few of the main characters are played by Romanians; most of them just use their own accents rather than imitating a Romanian one (it's more justified in Vivian's case, given she was initially raised in America, so it's understandable she would have an American accent). This includes Olivier Martinez as Gabriel (French), Katja Riemann as Astrid (German), Bryan Dick as Rafe (English) and Chris Geere as Ulf (English again).
• Follow the Leader: The film adaptation appears to draw upon the Underworld franchise, which had been quite successful at the time (Underworld: Evolution came out the year before Blood & Chocolate), more so than the book, such as featuring more action, moving the setting to Central/Eastern Europe, the gothic aesthetic and so on. The fact it was made by some of the people who produced Underworld likely has a lot to do with this.
• International Co Production: Between the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Romania and Germany.
• Saved from Development Hell: There were plans to make a movie adaptation of Blood and Chocolate as early as when the book was first published back in 1997, but it was delayed for years due to multiple directors and screenwriters dropping out. Production finally got into full swing in 2005/2006; filming was completed in 2006 and the film was released in January 2007, a full decade after the book's publication.
• What Could Have Been: Jennifer Love Hewitt was offered and turned down the role of Vivian.

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