Neill the Menace

Sam Neill recently starred as the “diabolically” corrupt president of a human blood farming corporation alongside Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe in the Spierig Brothers sci-fi/horror film Daybreakers. Neill “dominates the screen” as the evil Charles Bromley, “fill[ing] the air with menace”. “[Bromley] is the sort of person who is responsible for the economical times that we are laboring through at this point,” Neill said. “So I had some real-life models to work with, the Corporate Vampire if you will; the kind of guy that awards himself bonuses that you and I can only dream of.” Daybreakers is out now on DVD. Neill also stars as memorabilia shop owner Merritt Grieves in ABC’s Happy Town, a television series from the producers of Life on Mars. The show’s site explains: “Haplin, Minnesota, ‘Happy Town,’ has enjoyed an uneasy peace for five years, but all that is about to change. Still haunted by a number of unsolved kidnappings, the small town now faces a dark new crime that brings all its unresolved fears to the surface . . .” Happy Town premieres on ABC, April 28.