This is the sort of story you’ll probably only care about if you write about movies for a living.
Yesterday, Nikki Finke reported that Juan Antonio Bayona, director of The Orphanage, had been hired by Summit to direct Eclipse, the third Twilight movie. Variety later ran the story, reporting that he’d been hired, though noting that Summit had refused to comment. I updated Devin’s story from yesterday with both points (the hire, the no comment) without digging any deeper.
Turns out that Patrick Goldstein from the LA Times today had lunch with Erik Feig, Summit’s head of production, and the story isn’t true. “The ‘Eclipse’ directing job hasn’t been offered to Juan Antonio or
anyone else,” said Feig. “We’ve met with three or four talented
filmmakers and we’ll be meeting with three or four more other
candidates before we make any decision. No one has been offered the
job.”
So the field is still open — reportedly to Bayona, Drew Barrymore, James Mangold and Paul Weitz at the very least.
Question is: do you care? Because the series is such a pseudo-phenomenon it’s easy to get caught up in the flurry of names that are attached and/or interested. But it’s all for a franchise anchored by a film that was quickly forgotten by audiences outside the hardcore fanbase. (It’s a big hardcore fanbase, sure.) At this point I have zero interest in the films, but it’s interesting to see how a small outfit like Summit handles a potentially big franchise, and I’d like to at least see some interesting people get work out of it.