The director of a $3.5 billion franchise offers advice on the gratuitous reboot the world didn’t ask for

You’ve got to question the logic behind Warner Bros. slashing billions off its budget and upsetting a great deal of people along the way, while simultaneously announcing plans to reboot both Harry Potter and The Twilight Saga for streaming.

The obvious answer is that the risk will more than likely be worth the reward considering the two literary adaptations combined to earn upwards of $10 billion at the box office across their respective eight and five installments, but there’s still an element of “been there, done that, got the Team Edward and/or Team Jacob t-shirt to prove it” to the whole scenario.

Wizarding World supporters did not react kindly to the news Harry Potter was getting a fresh coat of episodic paint, but the Twihards have been a lot quieter. One person who definitely doesn’t mind is director Catherine Hardwicke, though, who offered advice to MovieWeb on what the show should do in order to differentiate itself from its predecessor.

“I think it’s exciting. I think we see that it’s an enduring story that people keep engaging with, you know, the TikTok world loves it, the internet generations, everybody keeps finding it. I was talking to a girl the other day, she was born the year we made the first Twilight film, and she was very passionate about it. So I think, if anything, in the first one, we were able to keep it a little bit more grounded, just a little bit.

You felt like there was some kind of reality to it, and you really felt the connection between Bella and Edward. So that might be a fun way to think about it, but also the chemistry between Edward and Bella is so important. We did the chemistry reads like right here at my house. And, you know, Rob and Kristen met each other for the first time here. We really kind of played around with that, to be sure that those kinds of sparks would be there. So I’m sure they’re going to do all that cool stuff, too. I’m excited for it.”

Of course, just like counterpart J.K. Rowling, Twilight creator Stephenie Meyer stands to make a killing on rights fees and royalties alone regardless of how Twilight V2.0 fares among critics and subscribers whenever it eventually reaches the airwaves, but we’ll be watching on curiously to see if the Hardwicke-approved reboot inspires anything approaching the same level of fervor the movies did.