Of course there was going to be a sequel to the Twilight movie that has captured teen hearts all over the world. That’s not news.
What is news is that the sequel will not be directed by Catherine Hardwicke, despite the fact that it’s taken in almost $160 million worldwide over a production budget of only $37 million. (The fact that it has a 44% fresh tomatometer reading is irrelevant because when the source material sucks and your fanbase wants you to stick slavishly to it, there’s not much else you can do.)
The Variety article points out something very interesting to me:
The problem that stalled negotiations [between Summit Entertainment and Catherine Hardwicke] was that Hardwicke had strong opinions about what to do with the next installment, and so did Summit. The debate was how to focus the adaptation of the second book [New Moon], which deals more with giant werewolves than vampires, as well as the long depression of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), after her vampire lover (Rob Pattinson) leaves her. One issue was how to get more of teen heartthrob Pattinson into the film. (Rosenberg has figured out a device to achieve this.) But Hardwicke, burned out from her Twilight labors, simply wasn’t willing to jam this movie with a script that still needed months of development.
And this, my friends, is why people shouldn’t adapt novels that have weak and flimsy plots into movies, no matter how much money it could potentially make.