Twilight ushered in an era where young adult movies based on popular novels became the trend in the film industry. There’s no question how Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart found their international fame in the franchise, even though they were initially clueless about how big of a project it was.
Despite the popularity of Stephenie Meyer’s novels, studios turned down the project believing it would not work. Little did they know, they were missing out on the chance of producing a billion-dollar franchise.
Twilight Director Never Expected The Vampire-themed Movie To Become A Huge Success
During her interview with The Hollywood Reporter, director Catherine Hardwicke talked about how she never expected the sudden fame and fortune of the Twilight film series. Starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, the movie franchise ended up as a massive box-office success. Hardwicke admitted:
“The truth is that I hadn’t heard of the book when I got the script, so I looked online and found some fan websites — but you never really know how successful a film is going to be. And it got turned away from every studio. Paramount turned it down, the producers shopped around and went to Fox, it got turned down again.”
Several studios refused to cater to the movie because they thought it would just make a repeat mistake. The director explained:
“No one thought it was going to be successful. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was a successful girls’ book turned into a movie, and it made $29 million, and I was told that Twilight would make about the same amount of money, making our budget really tight.”
Stephenie Meyer’s releasing the rest of the books also helped attract more fans, thus reaching a wider audience for the live-action film adaptation:
“But it was a perfect storm because Meyer kept releasing books as we were making the first movie. So that fan base really started building. We made $69 million opening weekend and $400 million overall. People were not expecting it.”
Its sequel, New Moon, even grossed higher than the first movie on its opening day with $72 million. The entire five installments collectively earned a whopping $3.3 billion worldwide.
Robert Pattinson’s And Kristen Stewart’s Careers Drastically Changed After Twilight
In the same conversation with THR, filmmaker Catherine Hardwicke talked about Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson leading a movie project as huge as Twilight. They were too young back then to understand how massive the impact of the movie was in pop culture as well as in the movie industry. Hardwicke stated:
“Kristen and Rob were indie kids when we started, and they were like me: They didn’t realize how big the film was going to be. And I remember one day where Kristen turned to me and said, ‘I think this is going to change my life.’ I could see this 18-year-old looking at a whole new world.”
The triumph of the Twilight franchise catapulted both Stewart’s and Pattinson’s careers to new heights while showing the studios the massive loss they just incurred for not believing in the material. Finally, the director added:
“Within a year, they were both making $30 million. But they still are indie kids, they’re still doing individual projects, and I think Twilight gave them the means to now be a part of any project they want to do.”
Despite the hate and criticism hurled at the Twilight movies, fans could not deny that it remains one of the biggest film franchises that influenced the modern pop culture industry on a grand scale.
