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So it turns out that Twilight‘s filmmakers are pretty confident that their movie is going to be a success. So confident are they that they’re tossing around the idea that if Twilight DOES in fact do well in the first few weeks, then not only will they set the filming of the sequel in motion, but they will go the Lord of the Rings route, and film both the second and third (and possibly the currently unreleased fourth) movies all at once!

According to MTV Movies blog and their Twilight Tuesday bulletin, Greg Mooradian (one of the producers) has said:

“It’s been discussed … I can’t tell you we’re at that place yet, but it’s definitely been discussed.” “The goal is to keep it moving quickly … That will give the audience a sense of knowing that the next installment is going to come at a really specific increment of time.”

This kind of move makes a lot of sense financially, especially for a little production company on a tight budget, but only if the movies draw a crowd. If there’s no interest after the second picture is released, they’re left with two more to release and only a handful of people to attend. In this writer’s humble opinion, this is never going to be an issue for the Twilight saga. There’s a ready and rabid set of Twilighters just hoping that this will come to pass, and who will attend every movie in the series over and over and over just see their beloved books come to life on the big screen.

The move would also make sense from the point of view of the story and universe in which it’s set. Many of the characters in these movies are vampires, the eternal undead, and therefore should not show signs of aging. In order to maintain this illusion, the movies all need to hit celluloid before any of the actors change in appearance, something which would be tough to do if they were filmed in sequence with even a few months of a break between them. So it’s easy to see why filming simultaneously would make a lot of sense. So much sense in fact that even the author herself agrees with the idea! Stephenie Meyer was asked about the concept and replied:

“I think that would probably be a smart way to do it,” she explained. “It makes sense in a world where actors are actually aging, and our characters aren’t. That makes a lot of sense to me, but of course, we are still negotiating the contract on that.”

Damn those contracts. The real world is never as simple as fiction, is it?