It may have never been showered with critical acclaim – and the level of fervor it inspired among its most ardent devotees went right over the heads of many – but it can’t be denied that The Twilight Saga did hire several stellar directors to steer the literary-turned-cinematic phenomenon to over $3.3 billion at the box office.
Catherine Hardwicke broke out in a big way with her acclaimed feature debut Thirteen before landing the opening chapter just five years later, while Chris Weitz had an Academy Award nomination under his belt for penning About a Body, with David Slade regarded as one of horror’s brightest new talents, before Oscar-winner Bill Condon brought the series over the finish line through the two-part Breaking Dawn.
However, another recipient of the most prestigious prize in Hollywood could have been the one to close out The Twilight Saga, with three-time nominee and one-time victor Sofia Coppola revealing to Entertainment Weekly that she held talks about it. Wisely, though, the prospect of that harrowing CGI baby and the questionable lore of imprinting put her off the idea.
“We had one meeting, and it never went anywhere. I thought the whole imprinting-werewolf thing was weird. The baby. Too weird! But part of the earlier Twilight could be done in an interesting way. I thought it’d be fun to do a teen-vampire romance, but the last one gets really far out.”
The decision to plunge young Renesmee straight into the uncanny valley from the moment of her birth is capable of causing nightmares and inducing ridicule in equal measure, although it would have been undeniably fascinating to see what a talent such as Coppola could have brought to the grand finale of a blockbuster behemoth.
Published: Oct 25, 2023 02:10 am