Twilight Director Reveals If She Would Do A Midnight Sun Movie

After the success of the Twilight books and the films that came out of them, author Stehanie Meyer decided to forgo a traditional sequel or spinoff in favor of a retelling of the first book from a different perspective. The original Twilight was told from the perspective of Bella Swan, but the spinoff — now set for an August 4 release and titled Midnight Sun — was told from the perspective of Edward Cullen, her love interest. The plot might be the same, but the point of view couldn’t be more different, since Bella is a high school girl, but Edward is a century-old vampire. During a recent interview, Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke seemed to say she wouldn’t immediately reject the idea of doing the book as a film if it were to come up.

Since the original films starred Kristen Stewart as Bella and Robert Pattinson as Edward, it would be difficult to bring them back for it. Not only are they huge stars now, but they aren’t exactly age-appropriate for it anymore.

“[It] would be fun. It would be fascinating,” Hardwicke told Entertainment Tonight, admitting that it would be “difficult” to pull off. “Rob is Batman now… and Kristen is in a million beautiful projects….Who knows what would happen?”

Given that both Stewart and Pattinson have since distanced themselves from the franchise, often joking about that period in their lives and the impact of being young and in the spotlight.

Midnight Sun has been in gestation for years; more than a decade ago, a draft of the manuscript leaked online, and the fan fiction community set about doing their own take on the idea, while Meyer, stung by the leak, shelved it in favor of working on new projects that didn’t involve Twilight for a while. With its release, of course, the question will become whether she plans on doing more with the story, whether it’s additional books, sequels told by Edward, or film and TV properties. Shortly after the original Twilight films concluded, Lionsgate had shopped it, as well as a number of other big-name IP like RED and The Expendables, for prestige TV, but none of the projects ever materialized — potentially making that an obvious venue for a non-remake remake.

Hardwicke is now working on episodes of Quibi’s Don’t Look Deeper, which stars Helena Howard, Don Cheadle and Emily Mortimer. The series centers on a teen who begins to suspect she might not be human. That series launched this week on the streaming platform.