Ok ladies so it's confirmed Catherine Hardwicke, the Director for Twilight will not be returning as the director for New Moon.
SUMMIT BEGINS SEARCH FOR NEW MOON DIRECTOR
Los Angeles , CA , December 7, 2008 – Summit Entertainment and director Catherine Hardwicke jointly announced today that the filmmaker will not be directing the next installment in the newly minted TWILIGHT film franchise. Summit ’s targeted end of 2009 or early 2010 release of the film, NEW MOON, does not work with Ms. Hardwicke’s required prep time to bring her vision of the film to the big screen. Thus as has been done before with many successful film franchises, the studio will employ a new director for NEW MOON.
"I am sorry that due to timing I will not have the opportunity to direct NEW MOON,” said Hardwicke. “Directing TWILIGHT has been one of the great experiences of my life, and I am grateful to the fans for their passionate support of the film. I wish everyone at Summit the best with the sequel-- it is a great story."
“Catherine did an incredible job in helping us to launch the TWILIGHT franchise and we thank her for all of her efforts and we very much hope to work with her on future Summit projects,” said Erik Feig, Summit ’s President of Production. “We as a studio have a mandate to bring the next installment in the franchise to the big screen in a timely fashion so that fans can get more of Edward, Bella and all of the characters that Stephenie Meyer has created. We are able to pursue an aggressive time frame as we have the luxury of only adapting the novels into screenplays as opposed to having to create a storyline from scratch.”
I have mixed feelings about this. ON the one hand I liked Twilight and am happy with what they have done with it considering the budget and everything. On the other hand I wished they and the director could've done a better job with the pacing of the story. So I am somewhat willing and hoping that the new director for New Moon will be better and do a great job with New Moon. I just hope that they are not re-hiring Catherine because of money issues considering that Twilight has raked in almost $160 million world wide and should continue to rake in more money when it opens in other countries later in the coming months.