Taylor Lautner doesn’t need a bailout. The co-star of Twilight will be allowed to keep his role as Jacob, the Native American kid who turns into a werewolf, for the sequel New Moon. Around the time original director Catherine Hardwicke was sacked from the series, we started to hear that Summit Entertainment didn’t want to retain Lautner, either. His character evidently gets pretty beefy in the second film, physically and narratively, as Jakob becomes the primary love interest while the vampire kid is off getting his hair did.
Summit’s disinterest in Lautner begs an obvious question: did the company read beyond the first book before signing off on this kid in the first place? Obvious answer: probably not. If the company had more time and/or money for this sequel it might not have ever become a problem. VFX could have stepped in to digitally slap Lautner’s face on some Harlequin Romance cover model slathered in faux fur. But Summit wants the sequel for November — they’ve got ten months to get this in the can. So it’s old school: Lautner bulks up, and the effects are made of vaseline, duct tape and bailing wire, just like the stuff in the first film.