The reason why studios have to make every vampire movie look outerworldly (or remotely like "Underworld" or "Blade") is that their business deals with money. In order to get people to fill-in the seats of theaters, they often use various tactics in advertising to draw them in. For example, in the theatrical trailer for "Hannibal Rising", there is a very brief shot that shows two characters (though with the way it appears, it suggests that it is the characters of Hannibal Lector {played by Gaspard Ulliel} and Lady Murasaki {played by Gong Li}) have sex. This brief clip caused a lot of fans to assume that the scene would be in the Unrated cut of the film, seeing it was absent in the theatrical cut. However, Peter Webber stated on the DVD commentary track of the film that the clip was actually shot with a pair of body doubles and was inserted into the trailer by the Weinstein Company and there was no such scene shot (I cannot recall clearly if he said that no such scene was even scripted, but I do believe he said that no scene was even scripted). Basically, the Weinstein Company inserted that brief clip as a means of drawing people into the theater via sex appeal.
But then again, this is true for a lot of film trailers. One of the best examples is the trailer to "Wicker Park", which suggests that the film is a straight-forward thriller (when in reality, the film is a light thriller/mystery/love story/drama).
This same mentality is true to the movie posters. They need to show something that makes it appealing and interesting to the audience so that they'd be willing to fork over the cash and get a ticket for the movie the studio is releasing. And the reason why they made the poster look like it belong to an "Underworld" film is because of how familiar people are with "Underworld" and "Underworld: Evolution". And with that familiarity, people will look at the poster and assume, "Oh, it's going to be like "Underworld", with vampires and kung-fu and stuff! I like that kind of movie. I'm so there!" They're using the popularity of "Underworld" to their advantage, much like a lot of films before (i.e. how "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Urban Legend" followed the trend started by "Scream").
The art of advertising now is making it difficult as to what kind of movie we are really getting. Look at the faux trailer for the movie "Don't" (from "Grindhouse") done by Edgar Wright, of "Shaun of the Dead" fame. Edgar Wright explained that when it came to coming up with the story for his trailer, he intentionally designed it so that you couldn't tell if it was a sex ghost film, a vampire film, a haunted house film or a possession movie or a cannibal killer movie. You can check out the faux trailer for "Don't" here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7W_sMFoyMs
So that's pretty much it, the whole story as to why the poster for "Rise" is designed to appear like an "Underworld" poster.
But this one's eatting my popcorn!
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