Twilight 6 Midnight Sun Trailer

[Fisseha Aranda]

Twilightis a 2008 American romantic fantasy film directed by Catherine Hardwicke from a screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the 2005 novel of the same name by Stephenie Meyer. It is the first installment in The Twilight Saga film series. The film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as Bella Swan, a teenage girl, and Edward Cullen, a vampire, and focuses on the development of Bella and Edward's relationship and the subsequent efforts of Edward and his family to keep Bella safe from another coven of vampires.

Twilight premiered in Los Angeles on November 17, 2008,[10] and was theatrically released in the United States on November 21, by Summit Entertainment. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film grossed over $407 million worldwide.[5] It was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on March 21, 2009, and became the most purchased DVD of the year.[11] The soundtrack was released on November 4, 2008.[12]

Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan leaves Phoenix, Arizona and moves to Forks, a small town located on Washington state's Olympic Peninsula, to live with her father, Charlie, the town's police chief. Her mother, Rene, is remarried to Phil, a minor league baseball player.

Bella becomes re-acquainted with Jacob Black, a Native American teen who lives with his father, Billy, on the Quileute Indian Reservation near Forks. At school, she finds the mysterious and aloof Cullen siblings particularly intriguing. She is seated next to Edward Cullen in biology class, but he seems repulsed by her.

When Bella is nearly struck by a van in the school parking lot, Edward instantaneously covers a distance of over thirty feet to put himself between her and the van, stopping it with only his hand. He refuses to explain his actions to her, warning her against befriending him. Jacob tells Bella about a long-standing animosity between the Cullens and the Quileutes; the Cullens are not allowed on the reservation.

After Edward saves Bella again, this time from a gang, after research she concludes that he is a vampire. He eventually confirms this, explaining that he found her scent irresistible back in biology class and that the Cullens only consume animal blood.

The pair fall in love, and he introduces her to his vampire family. Carlisle Cullen, the patriarch, is a doctor at the Forks Hospital. Esme is his wife, and Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie are their informally-adopted children. The family's reaction to Bella is mixed, as some of the Cullens are concerned that the family's secret could be exposed.

James attacks Bella and infects her with vampire venom. The Cullens arrive and kill James, decapitating and burning him, as Edward removes the venom from Bella's wrist, preventing her from becoming a vampire.

In the aftermath, Edward accompanies an injured Bella to prom, where he refuses her request to transform her into a vampire. They are unaware that James' mate, Victoria, is watching them, plotting revenge for her lover's death.

In early 2004, Greg Mooradian of Maverick Films brought an unpublished manuscript of Twilight to David Gale, then executive vice president of Paramount Pictures' MTV Films division, to propose a film adaptation. Gale, in turn, brought it to Paramount's then co-president of production, Karen Rosenfelt, who lobbied to option the rights to the novel. MTV Films eventually acquired the rights in April of the same year and later hired Mark Lord to write a script.[26] The screenplay that was subsequently developed was substantially different from its source material, being more action-oriented. According to Lord, he originally pitched his adaptation as a vampiric take on the play Romeo and Juliet, but MTV Films "wanted to just put in some more action to advance it more and give something more for the male audience. They thought they were going to lose the male audience with too much of a romance." MTV Films was pleased with the script he delivered, which included, among many changes, the character of Bella Swan being a long-distance runner, cursing, using shotguns against vampires who killed her father, being turned into a vampire, and riding "jet skis being chased by the FBI".[27] When talking about MTV Films' original script, author Stephenie Meyer said, "They could have filmed it and not called it Twilight because it had nothing to do with the book, and that's kind of frightening."[28]

Following a change of management at Paramount Pictures, the studio's new president of production Brad Weston told Gale that he believed audiences were not interested in films about vampires and werewolves, after being involved with box-office bomb Cursed at Dimension Films, and development stalled.[27][29][4][30] In January 2006, Paramount put Twilight into turnaround. Rosenfelt, who had left Paramount and came aboard Twilight as a producer, was determined to make the film happen, and attempted to forge a co-production deal between Paramount and Fox 2000 Pictures, where she had a producing deal, but Fox 2000 did not agree with Paramount's terms. Rosenfelt later tried to generate interest at Fox Atomic, but Fox Atomic passed. In October 2006, Rosenfelt met with Erik Feig, then president of production of Summit Entertainment, and mentioned to him that of all the projects she wished she could make, she thought Twilight had the biggest potential. After their meeting, Feig obtained a copy of the novel, read it, and passed it on to colleagues at Summit, who perceived it as an opportunity to launch a franchise. When Paramount Pictures let the rights to Twilight expire in April 2007, Summit acquired them, agreeing with Meyer that their film adaptation would be more faithful to the novel than MTV Films' version.[30][26][31][32][16][33]

Before even having the rights to Twilight, Feig, a fan of director Catherine Hardwicke, talked with Hardwicke on the 2007 Sundance Film Festival about working with Summit Entertainment and sent her five scripts of films the studio was developing, including Mark Lord's draft of Twilight for MTV Films. Hardwicke did not like any of the scripts, but ended up curious about Twilight. She bought a copy of the novel and realized the script she had read had very little to do with the source material, which she soon began envisioning as a film.[27] Following Summit's acquisition of the rights, Hardwicke was set to direct the film and Melissa Rosenberg was hired to write the script in mid-2007.[34]

The filmmakers behind Twilight worked to create a film that was as faithful to the novel as they thought possible when converting the story to another medium. Producer Greg Mooradian said, "It's very important to distinguish that we're making a separate piece of art that obviously is going to remain very, very faithful to the book. [...] But at the same time, we have a separate responsibility to make the best movie you can make."[39] To ensure a faithful adaptation, Meyer was kept very involved in the production process, having been invited to visit the set during filming and even asked to give notes on the script and on a rough cut of the film.[40] Of this process, she said, "It was a really pleasant exchange [between me and the filmmakers] from the beginning, which I think is not very typical. They were really interested in my ideas",[41] and "[...] they kept me in the loop and with the script, they let me see it and said, 'What are your thoughts?' [...] They let me have input on it and I think they took 90 percent of what I said and just incorporated it right into the script."[40] Meyer fought for one line in particular, one of the most well-known from the book about "the lion and the lamb", to be kept verbatim in the film: "I actually think the way Melissa [Rosenberg] wrote it sounded better for the movie [...] but the problem is that line is actually tattooed on peoples' bodies. [...] But I said, 'You know, if you take that one and change it, that's a potential backlash situation.'"[40] Meyer was even invited to create a written list of things that could not be changed for the film, such as giving the vampires fangs or killing characters who do not die in the book, that the studio agreed to follow in the contract.[40][41] The consensus among critics is that the filmmakers succeeded in making a film that is very faithful to its source material,[42][43] with one reviewer stating that, with a few exceptions, "Twilight the movie is unerringly faithful to the source without being hamstrung by it."[44]

Several actresses, including Lily Collins[46] and Jennifer Lawrence,[47] screen tested for the role of Bella Swan, while Frances Bean Cobain turned down the opportunity to audition for the role.[48] Hardwicke desired to test Kristen Stewart, who she had seen in Into the Wild and became her first choice for the part. Stewart eventually agreed to met Hardwicke while working on the film Adventureland, and Hardwicke visited her in Philadelphia with actor Jackson Rathbone, who was in contention to portray Edward Cullen, for an informal screen test that "captivated" the director.[27][4] After casting Stewart as Bella, Hardwicke had trouble finding an actor otherworldly enough to play Edward Cullen. Rathbone, Shiloh Fernandez, Ben Barnes, and Robert Pattinson were the final four up for the role.[49] Hardwicke did not initially choose Pattinson for Edward Cullen, with him arriving at her house in Venice, Los Angeles for a test, according to Hardwicke, "kind of wild-looking" with "scraggly, black dyed hair, and a stain on his shirt", while also having, according to Pattinson, a "hairless, chubby body" from "drinking beer all day" for a few months.[50] After an audition on her bed, however, where Pattinson kissed Stewart for the screen test and fell out of the bed, he was selected.[27][51][4] Hardwicke said, "Kristen was like, 'It's got to be Rob!' She felt connected to him from the first moment. That electricity, or love at first sight, or whatever it is." Hardwicke gave him the part, as long as he got in shape and made a promise. "'You've got to realize that Kristen is 17 years old'", Hardwicke told him. "'She's underage. You've got to focus, dude, or you're going to be arrested.' I made him swear on a stack of Bibles."[51] Pattinson was unfamiliar with the book series prior to his screen test but read the books later on.[52] Meyer even allowed him to view a manuscript of the unfinished Midnight Sun, which chronicles the events in Twilight from Edward's point of view.[53] Fan reaction to Pattinson's casting as Edward was initially negative; Rachelle Lefvre remarked that "[e]very woman had their own Edward [that] they had to let go of before they could open up to [him], which they did."[52] Meyer was "excited" and "ecstatic" in response to the casting of the two main characters.[54] She had expressed interest in having Emily Browning and Henry Cavill cast as Bella and Edward, respectively, prior to pre-production.[55]

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