‘Twilight’ Author Wishes This Scene Would’ve Made It Into the Movies
Though Stephenie Meyer never set out to author books that would become a global movie phenomenon, The Twilight Saga exceeded her wildest expectations. Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn became international bestselling books prior to being adapted into wildly popular films. And while Meyer seems generally happy with the outcome of the movies, there are still certain things from her books that she wished made it to screen.
Though Meyer didn’t become a producer until the final two Twilight movies, she did provide a lot of feedback for all five films. The author often gave her opinion on the dialogue between the characters that she created and their actions and motivations. Still, distilling hundreds of pages of her story into a 2 -hour film was no easy feat. Thus, there were things that Meyer loved from her books that simply didn’t make the cut. And while the films didn’t make drastic changes from the eponymous books, Meyer still felt the loss of some important conversations that occurred in her books.
Stephenie Meyer on details from the ‘Twilight’ books that had to be condensed
“Most of the conversations that take place in the book would take like a half hour to do if you were actually saying the lines out loud,” the Twilight author revealed to The Hollywood Reporter. “You always have to distill that down to two lines, which is really hard for me. There hadn’t been that many huge changes. Everything stepped pretty close. Especially after the first one, they realized the fans were really wanting to see the specific scenes that they had read, and they made a really big attempt to kind of hit all of that.”
Twilight, in particular, was void of some of Meyer’s favorite scenes. One scene, in particular, she missed was when Bella’s biology class is blood typing and she nearly passes out from the smell of blood. Fans of the books will recall that this is a particularly memorable scene in the novel and leads to more development in Bella and Edward’s relationship.
The author really wanted to see one scene from the book on screen
“I think that the first one there were some things I missed,” Meyer added about the first film in The Twilight Saga. “I really missed not having blood typing. I wanted to see that! That would’ve been cool. Of course, there’s all these conversations that you’re just like, “I just want to hear them say the words.”
But if Meyer was so connected to the dialogue of Twilight, why did she never try her hand at screenwriting? According to the author, she has a hard time condensing her original ideas and it’s too painful for her to make the necessary cuts to her story that are required of a screenwriter.
Why Meyer wasn’t the screenwriter for the ‘Twilight’ movies
“I just don’t think I can abridge,” Meyer revealed. “I can make it longer. I can always make things longer than I intend for them to be, but cutting things down is just brutal. It’s like cutting off your fingers every time you lose a word. I know that I can’t do that, and I’m happy to have someone come in who can be a little bit more distanced from it.” Fortunately, Meyer was able to work closely with Twilight screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg, to collaboratively create movies that fans of the books could also enjoy.
