UPDATED: Twilight Franchise Closing In On Has A Director

UPDATE: Variety reports that Chris Weitz has officially signed on.

It was rumored earlier, but now it looks like Summit Entertainment has all but signed Chris Weitz on as the director for New Moon, the second film in the lucrative Twilight series. Entertainment Weekly breaks the news that though nothing official has happened yet, Summit has broken off talks with other potential directors and is finalizing the deal with Weitz. Word is that Weitz has a good relationship with Summit president of production, Eric Feig, and could be in Vancouver as early as Monday to begin preproduction on the film if everything goes smoothly. Weitz and his brother Paul launched the American Pie series with the first film in that franchise back in 1999, then did the very good About A Boy together before Chris went on to do last year's The Golden Compass on his own. Despite its box office troubles, I actually enjoyed the film and it seems Summit liked what he did, too. I think Weitz is a talented guy and though he may be male, he definitely does have some of the pedigree to assuage any people who cry foul. Let's see if he can improve on what Catherine Hardwicke started.

Continued after the jump...

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.

Continued after the jump...

Twilight Unfolds

Twilight grossed a whopping $69.6 million over the weekend, so it's no surprise that Summit Entertainment has decided to move forward on the sequel, New Moon. You can read the press release over at Cinematical. I haven't seen the movie yet, but a friend who did some post production work on it said it wasn't as bad as he expected (though to be honest, he was expecting very bad things). It's 44% rotten rating over at Rotten Tomatoes seems to suggest that most critics found it a lackluster adaptation, so let's hope the filmmakers take that to heart as opposed to the box office turnout when approaching the second film.

Continued after the jump...

Twilight Continues

With anticipation of the upcoming Twilight movie already building to an overwhelming fervor, it's only natural that the rest of the books in the Stephenie Meyer series start considering their future on the silver screen. The movie's release is just seven days away now, and today we find out that Summit Entertainment has started the development process for the remaining three books in the series--"New Moon," "Eclipse," and "Breaking Dawn." The studio has acquired the rights to the final three installments and hired Melissa Rosenberg (who also penned the first film) to write at least the next two. A screenwriter for "Breaking Dawn" has yet to be assigned (Does anybody else find that a little strange? Really? You hired her for the first three but you're holding off on signing her on for the fourth? For what? If she was shitty, why would you hand her the next two pieces to a potential blockbuster franchise, and if she's good, why keep her off the fourth? I don't get it.).

Rosenberg has an interesting resumé. She's done some varied work in TV, including stuff like "Birds of Prey," "The O.C.," and "Love Monkey," as well as written another hit for Summit Entertainment, Step Up. Though these projects may not seem particularly impressive, what I find most promising about her is the fact that she's a writer-producer on the Showtime series Dexter, arguably one of the five best shows on TV right now. Of course, Twilight's target demographic being what it is means she likely won't have the same kind of freedom she enjoys writing for everyone's favorite serial killer, but the two properties share a similar darkness that I hope she can adequately tap into as we move deeper into the quadrilogy. If anything, I just hope the series doesn't become recyclable teenaged fluff with a vampiric twist (though for all I know, it could already be too late for that). Anyway, I remain cautiously apathetic about this project and its inevitable sequels. We'll see if that changes in the coming week.

Continued after the jump...