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Fed: Twilight Fans Have Plenty to Sink Their Teeth Into
Like a vampire thirsting for blood, Twilight fans are a hungry lot.
But while New Moon, the second film in the four-part series, isn't due for release until November, there's plenty to keep appetites sated in the meantime. The DVD of Twilight, complete with deleted scenes and making-of documentary, is released on April 22, and Twilight Director's Notebook hit bookstores recently. Catherine Hardwicke, the director behind the worldwide hit which has made more than $US360 million ($A560.31 million) worldwide, says the fan hysteria has just grown and grown. "Luckily it was a little bit gradual, otherwise I think we would have just been like, wow, and maybe we would have chickened out," Hardwicke laughs. Fortunately Hardwicke herself is a passionate fan of US author Stephenie Meyer's best-selling series about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire. Hardwicke's dedication to the project helped her deliver a movie which recorded the biggest-ever box-office weekend for a film made by a woman. So when she was given the opportunity to publish a book based on her working notebook, including costume and design sketches, location scouting and behind the scenes photos, she jumped at the chance. "One thing that's been fun for me as I've gone around and met Twilight fans, a percentage of people come up to me and go, I want to be a director now, or I want to be a producer or a screenwriter or an actor," she says. "So I think that's kind of neat if I can inspire other girls to make films, and this is a cool mini portion of the things that go into making a movie." Through handwritten notes in the book, Hardwicke describes her inspirations, why bad weather forced her to change some scenes, and how they brought Meyer's novels to life on screen. She hand-picked the cast, and found Kristen Stewart to play human teenager Bella Swan quite easily. But finding someone to play the impossibly good-looking vampire Edward Cullen was a nightmare. "I did a lot of auditions and really nobody seemed like they were the perfect person," Hardwicke says. "A lot of people are great looking, are really interesting and whatever, but they didn't seem they were from another world and another time. "They didn't have that magical, mysterious quality." Hardwicke found the perfect Edward in British actor Robert Pattinson, who was young, handsome, pale, a good actor and had great chemistry with Stewart. But when the fans found out, they were not impressed. "The fans were really outraged when we first cast him, with people saying 'No way, he's disgusting'," she says. "But then when we started putting the photos out I think people started to think, 'Oh yeah, he's going to be good'. The tide turned." The tide more than turned - it developed into a tidal wave of support for the 22-year-old actor, making him one of the most desired celebrities on the planet. "It's turned way too much, it's almost scary," Hardwicke agrees. "You'll be there at a book signing in Rome and ... when they get to Rob, even though the bodyguard says you cannot kiss him and you cannot have your photograph taken with him, they will still dive over the table and kiss him. "It's not easy to control, and you get mobbed and the paparazzi is very invasive. He laughs about it, but I think it's pretty stressful." It wasn't just the cast and crew who were surprised by the level of the film's success. Summit Entertainment, the film studio behind Twilight, had a budget of just $US37 million ($A50.85 million) for the first film, of which the portion allocated for special effects was a mere $US1.2 million ($A1.65 million). Hardwicke says they had to get creative to make the effects- laden film with such limited resources. "If you look at Harry Potter which we're being compared with, you would spend $US150 million to $US250 million ($A206.16 million- $A343.6 million) on Harry Potter, or on X-Men or Spiderman, or Narnia," she says. "So it was like, wow, how do we pull this off? "What we did do is we did as much as we could in camera - live action basically - and we only have two green screen shots, almost nothing on a stage." In the book Hardwicke reveals she had to can an underwater dream sequence she had wanted to weave throughout the film, while her plans for a stunt-filled baseball game and fight scene had to be trimmed back. New Moon is currently filming in Vancouver, Canada, reportedly with an increased budget of $US51 million ($A70.09 million). But instead of Hardwicke, the film will be directed by Chris Weitz, who made The Golden Compass and About A Boy. Hardwicke says she walked from New Moon because she wasn't prepared to rush to start filming in March. "It was a shorter prep time than I had on the first one, and I wanted the second one to be better than the first, not more rushed than the first," Hardwicke explains. "I didn't personally think the script was up to speed yet, and I wanted to be able to dream about it and do research and be sure the werewolves were going to look cool, and have time to do the effects right." So Hardwicke will be among the millions of fans waiting to see New Moon in November and "hoping and praying" it lives up to expectations. After that it's just half a year until the planned release of the third film, Eclipse.
And rest assured there will be plenty more Twilight-related products to feast on in the downtime.
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