Kate Beckinsale Will Not Return for More Underworld Movies

After having starred in five Underworld films, actress Kate Beckinsale is seemingly leaving the franchise behind for good, having cited that she's spent enough time playing werewolf hunter Selene.

When asked by Variety if she would ever consider returning to the franchise, which helped launch her career, Beckinsale bluntly stated, "I wouldn't return. I've done plenty of those."

Earlier in the interview, she described what drew her to a project, citing it typically boiled down to the script and the filmmaker. While she didn't specifically single out the Underworld franchise, she hinted that big blockbusters were, at times, difficult experiences.

"I've done indie movies where I'm sitting on a piece of folded carpet and it was wonderful. I've done great big movies that were the worst misery of my life. It all depends," Beckinsale admitted. "At university, I studied Russian and French. I never studied drama, so I always felt like from the beginning of my career that it was an apprenticeship. That freed me up to try a lot of things. It gave me a lot of latitude. I started out in the indie space. I never anticipated doing one of those heavy-weight, very physical franchise things. It was scary to see myself on movie posters on the side of every single bus."

Looking back at Beckinsale's career will reveal a number of big-budget projects, such as Pearl Harbor, Van Helsing, and Total Recall. However, it seems pretty evident that, when it comes to "physical franchise things," she's hinting at her involvement in the Underworld franchise, which began in 2003 and continued up through 2017.

Another possible explanation for her lack of interest in the series is that she married franchise co-creator Len Wiseman following their collaboration on the original film, though the couple filed for divorce in 2016.

Last fall, Wiseman claimed that he was developing a TV series inspired by the franchise of which he would serve as showrunner. He shared with Deadline at the time, "The series will be a pretty big departure from the films. I don't want to say it's more adult, but it's definitely less comic book in its tone and character."

Wiseman was recently announced as an executive producer and pilot director of the upcoming Swamp Thing series, making the fate of the Underworld TV series uncertain.

The most recent film in the franchise, Underworld: Blood Wars, sits at 21 percent positive reviews on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes and took in $81 million worldwide.

Stay tuned for details about the future of the Underworld series.

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[H/T Variety]