With filming to begin shortly on the third installment of The Twilight Saga, the support cast of newest sequel film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse have begun making their way to Vancouver, BC this week in preparation. While the big stars — Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner — prolly won’t be flying in to town until the last minute, the support staff has to arrive early. Here are pics of Kellan Lutz (who plays Emmet Cullen), Ashley Greene (who plays Alice Cullen), Xavier Samuel (who plays Riley, Victoria‘s newborn vampire) and the newly cast Bryce Dallas Howard (who plays Victoria, taking over for Rachelle Lefevre who was unceremoniously fired from the role just last week) arriving in Vancouver last night:

As you may already know, Kellan and Ashley play members of the central vampire family (the Cullens) in the film and Bryce plays the evil vampire Victoria who is hellbent on killing Bella Swan (played by Kristen Stewart) for her role in the killing of her beloved companion James (played in Twilight by Cam Gigandet) who was actually slaughtered by hero vamp Edward (played by Robert Pattinson) while saving Bella. Xavier will play Riley, a newborn vampire created by Victoria to lead her army of vamps against the Cullens and their tenuous werewolf friends (lead by Jacob Black, played by Taylor Lautner) who are banded together to protect the life of the very human Bella. Ye gods, you just *know* a story this epic is going to be AWESOME! Well, we’ll see. The other castmembers of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse should be streaming into Vancouver all week long … so get ready, Canucks. The vampires are coming.

[Photo credit: Splash News]