Catherine Hardwicke
With only three exceptions in a fifteen year directing career, the work of Catherine Hardwicke has returned healthy profits on investment. Her debut, Thirteen, earned $10.1 million against a $2 million budget, while her adaptation of Red Riding Hood took $89.2 million against a budget of $42 million. But it’s her highest-grossing film that qualifies her for the Star Wars franchise, because it’s an example of what she can achieve when working with material that has an audience baked right in.
2008’s Twilight cost $37 million for Hardwicke to make, but earned $393.6 million in box office receipts – and propelled that property into a billion-dollar film franchise that technically gave birth to another. Though Catherine Hardwicke did not return to direct the instalments of Twilight that followed her initial blockbuster, the series (and more specifically, its source material) were the inspiration for E.L. James’ Fifty Shades book trilogy – which has now been turned into its own billion-dollar movie franchise. Arguably, none of that would have been possible without Catherine Hardwicke doing such a great job with Twilight.
Her ability to take an existing work of fiction and turn it into something far more compelling and satisfying is therefore proven – along with her ability to turn a smaller budget into greater profit. Indeed, with Twilight, Catherine Hardwicke built an augmented reality of sorts – bringing the fastastical into a more grounded situation. This skill-set would lend itself very well to a Star Wars Anthology movie – perhaps focusing on the exploits of characters attending flight academy, hoping for a meaningful career with the Rebellion.
