This can’t be a surprise to anybody: I got a press release this morning telling me that Summit has officially greenlit the sequel to Twilight, New Moon. It’s actually surprising that Summit waited for the Friday totals (a huge 35.7 million) to announce this – the movie had been selling out shows in a big way in advance, so it looked quite likely that Twilight was going to be a box office phenom.
New Moon sounds like it’s even more boring than Twilight, if that’s possible. This one doesn’t even have bad guys, according to Wikipedia. Apparently Bella is opening presents and gets a paper cut, which sends good vampire Jasper (the guy in the movie who always looks sort of stunned. He made me laugh) into a blood frenzy. A paper cut!!! Anyway, this for some reason makes brooding bohunk Edward leave town. Bella is all broken up about it and starts doing dangerous things because – seriously – danger makes her hallucinate Edward’s voice. And she starts hanging out with that Indian kid, who it turns out (unshockingly) is a werewolf.
In a plot twist out of Three’s Company, Edward thinks Bella is dead, so he goes to Italy to some vampire ruling council, hoping they’ll kill him. Bella and the good vamps follow him to stop Edward from killing himself. These people should get cell phones.
Even fans have complained that New Moon gets pretty dull right in the middle, so I imagine the filmmakers have a lot of work cut out for them. The Summit release doesn’t mention whether or not Catherine Hardwicke will be back for the sequel, but all of the actors are signed on for multiple movies, so you’ll get to see Robert Pattinson’s ludicrous hair in another film!
Here’s to hoping that the success of Twilight has put Summit in a position where they can spend a dime on the FX for New Moon. Especially if there are some werewolf scenes in there.