Kate Beckinsale, Michael Ealy, and Beautiful Brit Theo James Talk "Underworld: Awakening"

Kate Beckinsale, Michael Ealy and Theo James

When it first began in 2003, the Underworld franchise had one main and quite potent selling point at its disposal: Kate Beckinsale in leather. Thanks in part to that, the franchise has now grossed a total of nearly $300 million worldwide over three films, with the fourth installment, subtitled Awakening, due to hit in theaters in January 2012.

Beckinsale, who was absent from the third film due to its being a prequel, is back this time around as sexy vampire assassin Selene, and at Comic-Con the flawlessly beautiful and very friendly actress took a moment to sit down with myself and several other reporters to talk about what we can expect from the upcoming sequel.

"I think like everybody, I had, and [original director and producer] Len [Wiseman] had, and I think most people who are sensible have a slight allergy to a number '4' coming after a movie title, cause it usually means it's shit," she said. "In order to make it sort of justifiable to make a movie, we really had to do something different and take it somewhere else, and not just continue exactly where we left off in the second one. So that's really what I think clinched it for us, was that it was so different, there was so much new stuff going on."

Awakening, which was unsurprisingly filmed in 3D given that current trend, takes place some time after the second film ended and has Selene waking up from a coma to a world that has changed quite radically.

"I think the first part of the movie is... you're sort of catching up, as she is, with everything that's changed around her," said Beckinsale. "So the Underworld is no longer really under. It's boring to call a movie 'World' though, isn't it? [laughs] So it's really a question of her waking up and going, 'Where the hell am I, and what's happening?' And kind trying to figure... out who various significant people are."

Beckinsale as Selene

Not only serving to raise her bankability as an action star, joining the Underworld franchise was a life-changing experience for Beckinsale personally as well, as she went on to marry Len Wiseman, the director of the first two films and a producer on all of them, in 2004. This installment marks the first time she wasn't directed by her now-husband in the franchise, with Swedish duo Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein (Shelter) taking the helm this time around.

"Don't forget, I've done two with Len and I did marry him and everything, so I quite liked him," she joked. "So contemplating doing it without Len... that felt kind of funny."

Also joining us were Beckinsale's sexy co-stars Michael Ealy (The Good Wife, pictured right) and Theo James (from British television series Bedlam), who mark their first time out in the franchise portraying Detective Sebastian (a human) and David (a vampire), respectively.

"Detective Sebastian represents the human element of the franchise," said Ealy. "It's kinda like the first time when there's really like a human element and you see that these lycans and vampires are living among us. In this particular version though, the lycans are actually extinct [air quotes]. But right now, he's just a human detective."

The charming and quite handsome actor also spoke about his character's relationship to Selene in the film, which as he told it gets off to something of a rocky start.

"The first time I meet Kate's character she has a gun to my head," he said. "Which was charming. What a great way to start off a relationship. …There's a lot of tension between these two. A lot of tension, based on my character's past [with] her kind. So you know, we don't get along, we're not buddies right away."

Next up was Theo James, a soft-spoken Brit in possession of perhaps the most beautifully-shaped eyebrows I've ever seen on a man. I and the female journalist sitting next to me (and I suspect a couple of the straight men as well) were putty in his hands as he spoke of joining the franchise for the first time.

"[David is of] the younger vampiric generation," said James. "He's kind of at loggerheads with his dad, his father Thomas, [played by] Charles Dance. There's this whole purge... the humans have been trying to eradicate the vampires. And he kind of represents the gung-ho, new, younger generation who want to actually step up to the plate and fire back, basically."

Theo James

So can we expect to see David shirtless at any point? I didn't have the balls to ask (though in Bedlam the actor's naked torso is pretty frequently on display, at least if my exhaustive Google image searches are any indication), but James did do many of this own stunts, a fact I was unreasonably intrigued by.

"I got like free-running training with the stunt guys... and boxing, which I'd already done quite a lot before, and knife work, and you know, how to kill someone in 30 seconds," he grinned. "No, I'm joking." It wasn't really that funny, but I'm pretty sure we all laughed anyway.

And then a minute or so later he was gone, my beautiful Theo; off to break more hearts, no doubt.

Underworld: Awakening is in theaters January 20th, 2012.