Hold on tight, spider monkey, because we are soon approaching the ten-year anniversary since the first Twilight movie premiered in theaters. The adaptation of the first entry in the best-selling YA series took teenagers of the time by storm as it followed the forbidden romance between an awkward high-schooler Bella and a sparkly over-100-year-old vampire, played by Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. In a nostalgia-hungry film industry, remakes and reboots are being greenlit right and left and rumors of one for Twilight certainly hasn't been left out of the conversation. I spoke with Kellan Lutz, who played Emmett, about his thoughts on the possibility. Here's what he said to CinemaBlend:
Definitely for the first movie, I think Twilight has the lowest budget out of all of them from New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, and I can only imagine what Catherine [Hardwicke] would do if she had a $59 million budget compared to ($37 million budget of the first.) So, I think they could remake the first one, but I don't think they could remake or should remake the franchise until there is some new technological advancement. I think the CGI was already top notch in the movies.
Twilight was an explosive success when it opened a decade ago, biting its teeth into $400 million worth of worldwide box office earnings. The film set off an entire franchise of five movies starring a young cast of breakout stars. Kellan Lutz played Edward Cullen's brawny and goofy "brother," Emmett, who just had a few lines in the first Twilight before his part grew as the franchise did.
Per Kellan Lutz's comments, going on another five-year journey with Bella and the Cullen clan so soon does seem a bit... soon. While he doesn't think a whole new Twilight movie series should happen, he wouldn't mind seeing the first one remade with the same budget the rest of the films had to work with where audiences were able to see the vampires really show off their powers, and give way to the campy and cheesy feel the first one had to it.
Before the franchise found its success, the first Twilight was a risk for Summit Entertainment, which saw a string of flops before the movie put the company on the map. Director Catherine Hardwicke recently told CinemaBlend that the original script strayed quite far from the source material. Today if she was to make the film, she echoed Kellan Lutz's opinion of adding more cool CGI effects and stunts that wasn't possible on the lower budget she had.
The only other reason for Twilight to see a reboot would be if it was reimagined for today's audience that is witnessing more strong female leads and diverse casting choices. That would, however, deviate from the source material, which could alienate its huge fanbase and author Stephanie Meyer.
The Twilight franchise was truly a pop culture phenomenon of the time that can still comfortably in the last decade as a success without Hollywood bloodsucking it too thin. The first Twilight is now available on 4K Ultra HD.
