Late last week we began hearing rumors that Summit Entertainment had moved their search for a director of the third Twilight movie, Eclipse, away from Drew Barrymore and toward Juan Antonio Bayona, director of the fabulous horror film The Orphanage.  At the time we didn’t report the rumors because well, we are lazy. But now that the folks at Variety and THR have confirmed the rumor that began with Anne Thompson, we feel it necessary to pull ourselves away from prepping for SXSW and give the story a little bit of love.

So here’s the rub for fans and non-fans of Twilight: the third film just got a whole lot more interesting. For anyone who has seen The Orphanage, you already know that Bayona has an immense talent for delivering the darkness, as any Guillermo Del Toro protegé should. His ability to craft a very dark fairy tale in that film could translate brilliantly should Summit stick to a faithful adaptation of the latter Twilight books, which feature some scarier vampires and of course, more werewolves and other creatures. As I understand it, the entire story gets darker and darker as they go along. So this fits perfectly for Bayona, who could definitely bring the creepy if given the greenlight by the studio. In fact, by choosing Bayona in the first place, Summit is giving us some insight into where the series may go.

And from where I sit, that could actually be very cool. I would hate to see them take some of the darker elements of the latter Twilight books and bedazzle them in order to cater to the younger demographic that drove much of the first film’s success. Then again, I wouldn’t be able to blame them for sticking to what makes money — because sometimes studios do enjoy making money. Hopefully they will find a way to strike a balance in this particular instance. There is no word yet on whether or not Eclipse will impact Bayona’s work on Hater, a Universal project to which he has already been attached.

What do you think of J.A. Bayona directing Eclipse?