6. ON-SCREEN DRAMA STAYED THERE
Having starred in 'Zathura' and 'The Polar Express', Hutcherson was an old pro compared to newbie co-star Chris Massoglia, whose previous work highlight was an episode of 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' but who takes the starring role of Darren. Considering the two play friends who turn on each other, it was a recipe for off-camera squabbling. Luckily, that never happened. "Chris is a very friendly person and we hit it off right away," says Hutcherson. "We became best friends by talking about any kind of sports: basketball, baseball, football. We played basketball at the gym a few times." All the better to prep for the full-court-press showdown their characters face.

7. JUST LIKE 'ABOUT A BOY' ... SORT OF
Writer-director Paul Weitz is probably best known for helming 1999's 'American Pie' and 2002's 'About a Boy,' so obviously, a movie about circus freaks and vampires was a natural for him, uh, right? According to Weitz, it was. In fact, he sees this movie as sharing a lot of common ground with 'Boy.' "Initially this started to feel redundant, like another weird mentorship story," he jokes. "But before reading the books, I'd been thinking of doing a movie in which a kid gets a vampire for a mentor. And Hugh Grant always used to make fun of me, ribbing me about the vampire movie. [But] there's also a part of it that's about conformity versus individualism and being okay with being a freak, which I became more and more interested in as we worked on the story."

8. NOT YOUR USUAL FREAKS
Considering the source material is a book series with "freak" in the title, you might expect, well, a freak show. Weitz saw it differently. "I grew up around a lot of German-Jewish refugees, people who'd lost all their possessions except some aesthetic things like paintings or clothing, and they'd carried their lives on their backs," he says. "They were all really colorful people, and so the way I related to the freaks was in terms of them being artists, as opposed to going to 'Carnivale' on HBO or Tod Browning's 'Freaks.'" Weitz was also inspired by 1920s and '30s Expressionist art as well as his own notebook. "I took stuff I cartooned as a kid, like a three-foot-tall dude with a three-foot-tall head."

9. IT'S A LITTLE VIOLENT
Though the movie is based on young adult books, don't mistake this for a kiddie picture. "I'm not afraid of going over the top," says Weitz. "'American Pie' had a lot of sexual content, and I remember bitching that you could get away with any amount of violence but nothing sexual ... and now the chickens are coming home to roost. But it's not wildly violent, but it's probably a strong PG-13." According to the MPAA, the movie is rated PG-13 for "sequences of intense supernatural violence and action, disturbing images, thematic elements and some language." So, not for tweens prone to nightmares.

10. THE AUTHOR WAS M.I.A.
Writer Darren Shan was invited to the set to see his words brought to life, but he didn't accept the offer. That doesn't mean there was a writer-director feud a la Anne Rice and 'The Vampire Lestat.' "He's been very kind," says Weitz. "We kept trying to get him to come, but he was like, 'That's okay.' He's writing and doing a book tour. Plus, it must be strange to see your work taken and changed." Weitz had a similar experience with 'About a Boy' author Nick Hornby. "He said, what can I do? If it was going to be fun, it was going to be fun, and if it wasn't, what was I going to do, stomp around the set?"