Screen Gems and Lakeshore Entertainment have announced that Kate Beckinsale (The Trials of Cate McCullough) will officially reprise her role as Selene in the fourth installment of the Underworld franchise. Production is scheduled to begin in Vancouver next March.

As we told you previously, Len Wiseman (The World After), who directed the first two Underworld films is producing the film and John Hlavin (The Shield) penned the screenplay, which has since been revised by J. Michael Straczynski (World War Z).

Underworld 4 is slated to hit theaters on January 20th, 2012.