It's possible that you're completely unaware that the series has gone this far, but the fourth movie in the Underworld franchise is already upon us, and it now has a tentative title: **New Dawn.
Two words that seem to sum up the suspected reboot then, since this will almost certainly be Kate Beckinsale's last outing in the PVC. Part four will set up slinky vampire Seline's offspring as the new centre.
Set fifteen years after Underworld: Evolution (Rise of the Lycans was a prequel, you'll recall), New Dawn apparently sees Seline waking from a coma to find that she has a daughter. She's called Nissa (which, depending on your age, will either immediately remind you of Blade 2 or 1980s Doctor Who) and she's a vampire/werewolf hybrid, since her father was Scott Speedman's Michael. You remember that rather sudden tryst between Michael and Seline in the back of the van in Evolution, don't you? Pay attention at the back.
Also added to the horror soap opera seems to be a Weyland-Yutani-type corporation intent on creating "super-Lycans": uber-werewolves, hopefully not like Evolution's Hoth Wampa thing.
We always rather hoped that if the series was to continue without Kate Beckinsale, it'd switch its focus instead to Sophia Myles' character from the first movie. No particular reason. We just like Sophia Myles a lot. New Dawn will not be that film, but it will be in 3D, and it will be directed by Mans Marlin and Bjorn Stein (Shelter). The first script was by John Hlavin, with subsequent tinkering by J Michael Straczynski, and shooting starts in the spring, for a January 2012 release.
Anyone else cynical enough to suspect that that subtitle is meant to draw **Twilight **fans in?