The final Twilight outing, Breaking Dawn, was almost an R-rated movie from indie auteur Gus Van Sant, compressed into one movie and shot in 3D.
The two-part finale of the Twilight saga may have divided fans and critics, but could Breaking Dawn have been better if the movie followed its original plan? Released in 2008, Lords of Dogtown director Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight was a huge hit with teenage audiences and made overnight stars of its leads Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. Although Hardwicke didn’t return for the sequels, the success of Twilight ensures that the rest of author Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling paranormal romance saga will soon receive big-budget adaptations too.
Between 2008 and 2012, five Twilight movies were released in the series, with each sequel doing impressive business at the box office despite critics largely dismissing the franchise. Twilight had trouble holding onto directors since the original movie. Despite the success of 2010’s third movie, Eclipse, the studio chose to replace 30 Days of Night director David Slade with Chicago’s Bill Condon for the final film in the franchise.
However, the fourth movie Breaking Dawn soon became two movies, with the cast renegotiating their contracts due to fans insisting that the doorstopper final novel could not be compressed into one movie. When it was finally released, Breaking Dawn was another financial success for the series. Granted, the two-part ending to the Twilight series was controversial among fans due to Breaking Dawn’s many plot holes, and the final film(s) of the franchise could have been better—or worse—if the creators stuck to their very different originals plans.
Gus Van Sant’s Breaking Dawn
Believe it or not, the experimental director who brought audiences the desert-set existential drama Gerry and the school shooting movie Elephant was seriously considered for the final film in the Twilight saga. At the suggestion of star Robert Pattinson, Gus Van Sant’s name was put forward for the job of directing Breaking Dawn, and what might surprise readers more is the fact that the director was interested in the job. Van Sant auditioned to direct the movie, his confidence bolstered by the news that he was reported Pattinson’s perfect choice for the job. However, the helmer admitted that the “nerve-racking” audition process proved that his style wouldn’t work for the fantasy film series. Hard Candy’s David Slade may have made Eclipse the most underrated Twilight movie despite being a seemingly odd fit for the franchise. Still, evidently, the meditative creator of My Own Private Idaho was not cut out for directing the campy antics of the immortal vampire royalty, the Volturi.
A One-Movie Breaking Dawn
Twilight series author Stephenie Meyer admits that a two-part movie would be the only way to bring the saga’s final novel Breaking Dawn to life onscreen. Then delays in negotiations the cast’s contracts together ensure that the creators seriously considered condensing the massive novel into one (presumably incredibly overlong) movie before cooler heads prevailed. Not a lot was disclosed by the creators, but in March 2010, it was widely reported that Twilight’s Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson, and Kristen Stewart’s four-film contracts made a two-part Breaking Dawn unlikely, only for the studio to announce by June of the same year that they will begin shooting the two-part movie by the end of 2010.
The fees that each star was able to command increased massively since the original Twilight, thanks to the success of the series, but the higher price tag of Lautner, Pattinson, and Stewart was not enough to deter the studio from splitting Breaking Dawn’s narrative. The decision was likely a wise one, as Breaking Dawn Part 1 ends on Bella’s gruesome childbirth ordeal, and the final Twilight sequel can as such focus its considerable runtime on the Renesmee/Volturi plotline. Attempting to combine both stories into one movie would have created a cluttered, overstuffed story. Given how little screen time fan favorites like the Romanian coven and Rami Malek’s Benjamin received in the Breaking finished Dawn Part 2, a tighter edit was the last thing the two-part finale needed.
An R-rated Breaking Dawn
The source novel’s infamous vampire baby birth scene was originally going to earn Breaking Dawn an R-rating, a first for the teen franchise. Fans demanded that the movie version live up to the novel’s gory scene, but this led to a problem for the Twilight producers, who were aware that the franchise’s increasingly broad fanbase included many pre-teen viewers. Younger viewers would likely be permitted to see a PG-13 movie, but an R-rating would be a bridge too far for many families and would fly in the face of the chaste appeal of Twilight, whose romantic story was a more family-friendly affair than, for example, HBO’s gorier, sexier TV hit True Blood.
