Filmociraptor

Despite the best efforts of coalitions of nerds hating The Twilight Saga: New Moon all over NeoGaf forums and Warcraft message boards, it still has managed to bend the box office over a barrel and take advantage of it in ways most movies never have. But now, producers have run into a slight predicament...how do you handle film adaptations of books that get progressively longer?

LIGHTBULB! Look upon your predecessors! Summit Entertainment is looking to split the 756 page Breaking Dawn into two parts much in the way the Harry Potter franchise is handling their final installments. However, while this does this make for easier transference of EVERYTHING from the books into film, appeasing the hell out their hordes of very loud fans, but it drudges up contract issues with all of the actors, as well as issues with the director favored to finish out the series, New Moon helmer Chris Weitz.

Weitz will be the big hurdle. Summit was planning on funding his smaller, pet project The Gardener, but it looks like they're going to hold that hostage until Weitz signs on to guide the Twilight franchise through its final chapter. For Weitz, not only is it a lot of time away from his family, but just after deciding to stay in the business (his faith in the industry was rocked off its foundation by huge studio changes to The Golden Compass) this could turn into a somewhat shady move by Summit, which may turn him off completely.

With all of the money Summit is currently diving into in their Scrooge McDuck vault, the idea of having to give the three prinicples, Stewart, Pattinson and Lautner, raises shouldn't sway them from making the decision to split the films. Plus, this would give them yet another release they can make $480 million off of in two weeks. It sounds pretty win-win to me.

Source: Variety