‘Twilight’: Director Catherine Hardwicke Turned Down More Money Than She’d Ever Seen to Quit the Franchise
The Twilight films became a huge phenomenon in no small part due to director Catherine Hardwicke’s work on the first film.
But due to complications, Hardwicke chose not to return for the sequel, turning down a substantial amount of money to do so.
What made Catherine Hardwick want to get involved in ‘Twilight’
Hardwicke was already an accomplished director in her own right before shooting Twilight. The filmmaker had already done other notable films such as Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown.
Her films had a knack for focusing on characters through their adolescent years, a pattern which Twilight followed. But what initially sold her on doing the film was reading the book that Twilight was based on which was written by Stephanie Meyers.
“When I read the book, I thought Meyers had really captured the moments of first love. And thought how fun it was that she did it and drew millions of people to the book. It seemed like a big, cool challenge for me to create those feelings on film,” she once said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Catherine Hardwicke turned down more money than she’d ever seen to leave the franchise
It was a difficult choice for Hardwicke to walk away from the Twilight films. She once expressed enthusiasm at the possibility of directing New Moon, feeling that the sequels would appeal even more to her tastes.
“New Moon’s really taking a whole other leap with this new story and there’s really a lot of new characters in it. There’s the werewolves which is pretty crazy. All the wolves. Then there’s also going to Italy in the second book and there’s motorcycle riding and cliff-jumping and diving. I love jumping off of cliffs,” she once said according to ComingSoon.
But in an interview she did with Entertainment Weekly (via MTV News), Hardwicke shared there was a deadline the sequel needed to meet. The deadline, combined with New Moon’s budget restraints, made Hardwicke leave the films.
“I was devastated,” she said about her choice. “I really did feel a strong connection to the people around the world that liked the movie, and to Stephanie and the actors. But I just didn’t think I could make a good movie under those circumstances.”
What might have made the sequel even harder to turn down was the fact that Hardwicke would’ve made a fortune. According to the filmmaker, the studio offered her “more money than I or anyone in my family has ever seen.” But It wasn’t enough to stick around for a project she didn’t have full confidence in.
Catherine Hardwicke compared the original ‘Twilight’ script to ‘Charlie’s Angels’
Hardwicke’s contributions to Twilight’s success began as soon as she was brought on board to read the script. Initially, the movie she read strayed far away from its source material. So much so that the script briefly caught Hardwicke off guard.
“The very first thing in the script said that Bella was a track star. She’s obviously not a track star so the first moment you’re like whoa,” Hardwicke once told the LA Times. “And then she’s sitting in a diner with James and the bad vampires in the first couple pages. Wow, that doesn’t make sense. And there’s this whole FBI organization that’s tracking these bad vampires, the nomadic vampires, as they go down from Canada to Mexico. I mean, it’s pretty way out. And by the end the FBI is chasing them around on jet skis out in the ocean.”
After reading Meyers’ book, Hardwicke threw the original script out. She decided the film was better off sticking close to the novel.
“It kind of turned into Charlie’s Angels. It was cool enough that when I read it I became curious. I went out and read the book and was like, ‘Whoa boy. Throw the script away and let’s start over,'” she recalled. “Out of fairness to the original writer, he’s a great writer, the book wasn’t out at the time the MTV and Paramount people were developing it. The idea of Twilight was only a jumping off point and they did their own thing after that.”
