Lionsgate Television is at work on a revival of Twilight, marking the second time that the franchise has been tapped for the small screen since it concluded in 2012. Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling book series is still in early development, but a new report suggests that Lionsgate is much more serious about getting the show off the ground than they were a decade ago when it was previously rumored. So far, there are no creatives attached, with Lionsgate hoping to develop the format itself and bring a showrunner aboard before it seeks out a network or distributor, so they can maximize their control over the final product.
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Sources told The Hollywood Reporter that Meyer is “expected to be involved in the television adaptation.” Wyck Godfrey and former Lionsgate Motion Picture Group co-president Erik Feig will be on board as executive producers. The pair, while at Summit Entertainment, grabbed up the Twilight rights after other studios bailed, and turned it into a $3 billion hit franchise.
In 2013, shortly after the Twilight film franchise had wrapped up, RiffTrax tried to license the first movie to do a live riff in theaters. They were turned down.
“They understood what we wanted to do and didn’t object to the idea,” Rifftrax said at the time. “They just felt that the Twilight series is still very much a going concern for them, i.e. something that’s still going to earn them millions and millions more dollars, and it didn’t make sense to let a few guys crack jokes on top of it – at least not this summer.”
At the time, it seemed as though Meyer was done with the franchise (she even said as much), but in the years since, she has done some fun Twilight side projects, including POV- and gender-swapped retellings.
As far as the films themselves, they may have had middling reviews, but they had huge returns. They also helped to catapult Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart to global fame.
The series taps into a few different trends. Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that the Harry Potter series, which was being made into movies at the same time as Twilight, would head to their newly-rechristened Max streaming service in the near future. Lionsgate themselves recently brought back Party Down and announced a revival of Spartacus, and are reportedly considering a follow-up to Weeds.
The Twilight saga films are now available to stream on Peacock.
