J.A. Bayona May Seek to Darken Up Third Twilight Movie

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on March 12, 2009

Juan Antonio Bayona

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?

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Juan R.

I think it's very cool to darken up the franchise, but I think it's becoming a trend (and a pretty monotonous one) to darken up third parts.
Take for example the Harry Potter franchise, the first to movies were very light en happy and when guillermo del toro went for the third one (The prisoner of Askaban) he darken it up, giving it a very obscure tone with blue camera filters and more scary charctaers.
Another example is the Spiderman franchise, the first two movies were pretty heroic, and entertainig, and the third one really brought out the dark side of the story

You can see this even on the movie posters for that movies...damn!!! even Jurassic Park 3 (movie that really sucked) had a poster that eliminated the yellow of the logo and stuck with gray and metallic tones.
I've been watching this fad for a long time now, and i'm preety sure that there are more examples, so to darken up the third movie of a franchise like Twilight (movies and books that i couldn't care less) it just confirms that the DARK THIRD MOVIES are just a monotonoustrend in movies

Gemma

I wouldn't agree that it's a "trend" to darken the third installment of a series. I would just say that as a book or comic series progresses they tend to mature with the characters and as a result become darker. It would seem slightly odd if the character was aging physically but not mentally and the situations they were in remained stagnant. Note that your examples are mostly book adaptations, thus because the movies (even Spiderman comics) are all coming from established works of fiction they follow set guidelines or paths which the authors have crafted. Also, Guillermo Del Toro didn't direct "The Prisoner of Azkaban" it was Alfonso Cuaron and the reason it was darker was simply because of the way Rowling wrote the seven book series.

Van Helsing

I think The Orphanage is one of the best horror films to come around in a while, but I'm a little disappointed to see his talent go to waste on the fucking Twilight series. I read the first book (regrettably), and the plot synopsis of Eclipse sounds basically like: (1) more love triangle bullshit, (2) big fight between evil vampire army and all the other werewolves and vampires in Washington, where zero good guys die.

There was absolutely no horror in the first book, and I'm assuming it stays like that for the other three. So I'm not sure why he would be signed on to direct. I would love to see him absolutely ruin the movie's faithfulness to the book by actually making it less teeny-bopper friendly, but one can only hope.

andrew

yeah the books don't have much horror as they progress. however the vampire and werewolf mythology is expanded significantly in eclipse compared to the first and second books. there's still romance but the mythology (the best parts) is expanded a great deal which was a huge plus for me. for instance, the third books go into talking about this huge war between covens of vampires attempting to take control of cities so they can use the human population to feed. another cool thing was seeing how the vampires trained to take down these newborn vampires and how they showed the werewolves these techniques. finally, there was significantly more action in the plot and between vampires. however, i don't think you'll make it to the 3rd book cuz the 2nd one sucked big time.

Van Helsing

I don't think I'll make it to the second book because the first one sucked big time.

dureggersc

so....they're waiting until the 3rd movie to make this franchise good? geez.

Natalie

Gemma, I TOTALLY AGREE!!! Not to mention, the third Harry Potter movie is probably the least dark in the entire series because it is the only book in the series that contains absolutely NO VOLDEMORT.

David G

Seeing as the second installment IS currently in production, Yes. It'll have to wait till the third film to get to the point for any guy to go alone to see it. Any guy whod go, would have to need a good enough reason as "darker film". Otherwise, its just for young couples and teenagers.

J.A. Bayona May Seek to Darken Up Third Twilight Movie

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