In an interesting and pretty surprising move, Summit Entertainment has announced that they will be replacing Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke with a new director for the movie’s sequel, New Moon.
At first, reports via Nikki Finke said that Hardwicke was ‘difficult’ and ‘irrational’ during filming, which lead to idea of a replacement, but these reports have since been shot down as false and it looks like the problem is just your regular conflict of schedule and that it was in fact a mutual decision.
Both the director and studio released statements in regard to the situation.
Catherine Hardwicke:
I am sorry that due to timing I will not have the opportunity to direct NEW MOON. Directing TWILIGHT has been one of the great experiences of my life, and I am grateful to the fans for their passionate support of the film. I wish everyone at Summit the best with the sequel — it is a great story.
Summit Entertainment:
Catherine did an incredible job in helping us to launch the TWILIGHT franchise and we thank her for all of her efforts and we very much hope to work with her on future Summit projects. We as a studio have a mandate to bring the next installment in the franchise to the big screen in a timely fashion so that fans can get more of Edward, Bella and all of the characters that Stephenie Meyer has created. We are able to pursue an aggressive time frame as we have the luxury of only adapting the novels into screenplays as opposed to having to create a storyline from scratch.
I can’t say I ever had any real desire to see Twilight, and from what I’ve heard, this isn’t the worst thing that could have happened — especially if they find a bigger, better name to pilot the sequel — so take both the pros and cons in stride if you’re a fan. It seems to me like these guys just really want to be Harry Potter, and after taking up the vacated release date, they now want to avoid their characters becoming too aged. So if the director’s style and schedule makes this a difficult task, as a business you just have to move forward.
Only when they hire someone new – -and it seems they’re already on that — will we know if they have a chance to get better or if they’re going to hydroplane off the road.
New Moon is seeking to show up sometime in late 2009, early 2010.
Stay tuned.
