Earlier this month Vampire Academy fans got a peek at Lissa and Christian, two of the royal Moroi vampire characters featured in the feature adaptation of Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy series. While the broody Christian and sweet Lissa make eyes at one another throughout the story, another potential couple begins to spark, though you might not be able to see that in the above photo, as Rose and Dimitri are a bit busy with martial arts training to acknowledge their chemistry.
Courtesy of EW, the photo up top shows us Zoey Deutch and Danila Kozlovsky as Rose Hathaway and her dreamy Russian trainer Dimitri Belikov. Both are Dhampirs, which means they're half-human, half-vampire and exceptionally strong. In Mead's story, Dhampirs attend St. Vladimir's Academy alongside the peaceful Moroi vampires (living vampires who drink blood but also eat human food and age). While the vampires practice their supernatural abilities, most of which pertain to the elements (fire, water, etc), Dhampirs train to improve their strength and defensive skills in an effort to protect the Moroi against the evil Strigoi vampires (the more traditional non-aging, sun-allergic murdering-type vampires).
Of course, Rose can't help but develop a crush on Diminitri as he trains her. And you can kind of see that in this next photo…
Director Mark Waters says the above image is from a scene that involves Rose trying to surprise-attack Dimitri. Clearly, she isn't successful there, but Waters notes the evident tension between the two of them as he pins her down.
It won't be all training montages and sexually-charged attack sequences though. There's also the matter of Lissa and Rose trying to acclimate themselves at school after a prolonged absence from the academy. In the book, and presumably the film, the story begins with Rose and her best friend Lissa (Lucy Fry) on the run from St. Vladimir's. They're caught and brought back to school, but having been gone for so long, it's like they're the new kids, both socially and with their respective training. That brings us to this photo, which shows us Aaron Drozdov (Edward Holcroft), Mia Rinaldi (Sami Gayle) and Camilla Conta (Bronte Norman-Terrell) over on the far right.
It's here that director Mark Waters' Mean Girls experience might come in handy, as he says this scene takes place as Mia, a Moroi vampire whose gift is water and a catty streak, is playing a prank on Lissa during her first day back at school. It involves making a water fountain explode to soak Lissa's clothes.
And then there's this one, which may actually be the most spoilery of the photos. We've pointed out before that Rose doesn't actually hold a silver stake in the first novel. Stake-training and use doesn't come until later, but as Waters points out, they've made a little bit of a leap from the book here:
Waters says in this scene, Rose has a moment where she has an opportunity to kill a Strigoi, but she's just a novice and she hesitates and doesn't go through with it. " I have to keep it a little cryptic because I don't want to reveal too many things that happen in the movie, but it is her brief moment of trying to do something, but her training is not quite up to it yet," Waters says. So it seems like they're not going to turn the movie version of Rose into a super-hero right away. But hopefully this film will be a hit, in which case maybe we'll get to see Rose's progression from novice to Guardian… assuming she actually becomes a Moroi Guardian. I've only just gotten through Book 2.
Vampire Academy arrives in theaters February 14. Check out the trailer for the film here and read all about what screenwriter Daniel Waters had to tell us about the movie here.
