Fans of the hugely popular vampire romance “Twilight” may be happy to hear that a new director will step aboard for the sequel, “New Moon.”  Though “Twilight” garnered record-breaking numbers in its debut weekend, attendance dropped sharply in the following weeks, and many fans expressed disappointment in the popular book’s big screen adaptation.  We’d mentioned earlier that when we saw the film (click here for review), the audience responded to the film with sarcasm and laughter- not exactly what you’d expect from a horror/love story!

Summit Entertainment and director Catherine Hardwicke released statements to Entertainment Tonight about the change.  However, they kindly cited “scheduling conflicts” as the reason behind the change.  They told ET:

“I am sorry that due to timing I will not have the opportunity to direct ‘New Moon,’” Hardwicke said. “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 Stephanie 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.”

Yeah, right.  We think the change was due to poor audience response and negative fan reviews.  The film’s huge numbers pretty much guaranteed a sequel, but audiences felt short-changed at the almost comical adaptation of the book, and though Hardwicke is talented, she just wasn’t the right director to bring those characters to life.  Let’s hope the studio makes a better choice for the sequel!

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