Hardwicke Won't Be Around For New Moon

Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily broke the news, and now the trades are reporting it, too. Director Catherine Hardwicke is officially off of New Moon, the sequel to her box office hit Twilight. Official reasoning is that timing is to blame for the split--Summit Entertainment wants to rush the sequel into production for a late 2009 or early 2010 release, while Hardwicke is still burnt from shooting the first movie and promoting it. Writer Melissa Rosenberg turned in a draft for the second film in the franchise the week the first one opened, but Hardwicke was reportedly unsatisfied with the script and felt it needed months of development to perfect. However, insiders are saying that Summit didn't like Hardwicke and found her "difficult" and "irrational" during filming for Twilight. They're also saying that Summit feels like Elliot Davis, the director of photography, and Nancy Richardson, the editor, are the ones who saved the movie from the mess that Hardwicke had made.

Either way, this will surely create some delicate situations down the line. Hardwicke is still currently on a promotional tour for the film in Europe, and the press will likely pummel her with troubling questions about the split, all in front of her cast no less. And Hollywood feminists will have their own bit to say if Summit replaces Hardwicke with a male director. Twilight easily broke the record for the highest opening-weekend gross for a movie directed by a woman, and with the percentage of working directors that are females being as low as it is, losing someone like Hardwicke on a franchise as high-profile as Twilight is sure to open the door for critiques. Personally, though, I think you're forcing the issue a bit if you hinge onto the gender issue. If word leaked that a studio thought a director did a shit job (or was just an asshole to work with) on a franchise film despite its box office success, dumping the director would seem like an acceptable response. That seems to be what's happening here, and despite my appreciation for Hardwicke's other work, if the movie's reviews are any indication, she may have indeed dropped the ball here. That said, I do hope they get another female director. This franchise, despite its flaws, has been something women in the movie industry can be proud of, and I would like to see that spirit continue through to the end of the franchise. Still, the bottom line is that Summit needs to find a director capable of bringing the best interpretation of the material to the screen. As long as the person they hire can bring that kind of talent to the project, I don't think it matters if it's a woman or a man.

But what do you guys think? Is the gender issue as big as people are warning it to be? Or are they just being over-sensitive? Comment with your thoughts below.