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Twilight sequel, ‘New Moon’ filled with drama and concerns before shooting starts

Published on December 10, 2008 at 9:22 PM

With a tentative release date set for November 20th, 2009, the sequel New Moon remains un-helmed since Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke’s departure. Whoever ends up coming onto the project as director is going to have quite a few challenges, like being in Vancouver by December 15th to prepare for a mid-March production start date. Not to mention the second movie appeared to have little more than a rough first-draft working script.

The fledgling Summit studio’s mad rush to feed off of Twilight’s franchise potential may only exacerbate some of the problems that have already arisen for New Moon. With only a slightly increased budget of $50 million and breakout lead actors to pay more, shoots in Italy, and shiny new special effects, Summit may have to have to cut corners somewhere. It does look like Summit is setting up its Twilight franchise for a potential bad sequel in order to cash in as quickly as possible on its box-office-busting success.

Inside sources say that Hardwicke would have loved to direct the Twilight sequel, if given the license to take her time to make it better than the first, but “it ­became clear that Summit didn’t have those same priorities.
Good for her for keeping her integrity.  Despite all the drama, brutal production timeline, and potential for a bomb, Summit shouldn’t have a problem nailing a director soon because, as an insider put it, “We are in a recession. It’s a hit franchise. Whoever steps into it is guaranteed a $100 million gross. Everyone wants this movie.”

An executive at another studio added, “You’d have to have a very high standard for art, hate the movie business, and hate ­money to walk off this sequel.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, Summit has approached Golden Compass’ Chris Weitz to direct.

EW also has heard that Summit does not want to re-hire soft featured Taylor Lautner as Jacob. They don’t think he has what it takes to play the werewolf love interest/lead in New Moon. In a desperate attempt to keep the role, Lautner’s agent has reached out to the special effects people who did Brad Pitt’s new Benjamin Button film to see what wizardry they could do to demonstrate to Summit how a digitally bulked-up Lautner could work.

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