When I first saw the Hollywood Reporter piece on Melissa Rosenberg surpassing Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Alice in Wonderland) as the highest-grossing female screenwriter, it took me a while to wrap my mind around it. After all, it’s the kind of statistic that only a baseball fan could love. It doesn’t take into account the thousands of other people and factors that go into making a film a world-wide financial smash, giving credit solely to the writer (and only if that writer has official credit on the movie). On the other hand, it’s the kind of fact that feels significant. That tells us a bit about the world we live in. Maybe in a way that upsets us. At its barest, it reveals that the female movie writer responsible for banking the most money did it mostly through the Twilight series – Step Up is the only non-Twilight property she’s credited for outside of her lengthy television resume. It also means she did it mostly through means of a book adaptation. After Breaking Dawn Part 1 topped $647m, her total landed at just over $2.56b.

As the “worldwide phenomenon” that is The Twilight Saga of films (adapted from Stephenie Meyer‘s equally as popular and blockbuster-selling quartet of novels) has progressed through the years, it has become increasingly difficult for those not already inoculated into the cult of human-vampire-werewolf love triangles to process, enjoy, and understand just exactly what they’re seeing on screen. Which is a nice way of saying that the tale of Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, Jacob Black, and a whole mess of other humans and mythological creatures has spiraled almost totally and nonsensically out of control. Following their star-crossed high school courtship, unsteady human Bella (Kristen Stewart) and her smoothie vampire suitor (Robert Pattinson) have decided to take things to the next level. For most eighteen-year-olds (or ostensible eighteen-year-olds with Edward’s immortal appearance), that would mean getting down in the carnal sense – but for Edward and Bella, that means getting married (his choice) so that Bella can finally be turned to match her lover and his family (her choice). These are certainly big decisions for a girl who is barely an adult, but they’re made immeasurably more difficult by a hairy problem – teen werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), who is just as in love with Bella as Edward is. That’s The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 in a straight-faced nutshell. Yet, even fans of the series must admit that the final entry into Meyer’s series is absolutely crammed with elements that, at their best, could be described as bizarre. [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Back in August, Justin Lin vacated the director’s chair for the latest in Hollywood’s seemingly endless string of remakes – jumping off Highlander to spend more time making Vin Diesel and Paul Walker jump off moving trains on to moving cars (or similar) with his next entry into his wildly successful spin on The Fast and the Furious franchise. Summit Entertainment has now announced that Juan Carlos Fresnadillo will take on directorial duties for their Highlander reboot/magination/whatever, so let’s all pause to yell “there can only be one!” and move on with the news. Fresnadillo will direct from Melissa Rosenberg’s script, with the film poised to start filming in the spring of 2012. Summit’s official press release gives a quick plotline for the new film – “In HIGHLANDER, after centuries of dueling to survive against others like him, Connor MacLeod, an immortal Scottish swordsman must confront the last of his kind, a murderously brutal barbarian, who lusts for the Prize” – so, yes, rest easy, this is definitely a Highlander film.

Considering this week’s news that Justin Lin was vrooming down the director’s highway and careening right from Fast Five to the next installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise (forgive the terrible puns), it’s no surprise that the director is kicking some other projects out of his metaphorical trunk (glove compartment? backseat? whatever?) to make way for more mayhem with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. The first causality of that fast track? The Highlander reboot Lin has been attached to direct since 2009.

You probably read other movie sites, so you may have already seen articles decrying the idea of Melissa Rosenberg taking on screenwriting duties for Summit’s Highlander remake. Some of them do so just by headlining “Twilight writer set to write Highlander remake.” Pretty gruesome idea, eh? Let me re-title that: “Dexter writer set to write Highlander remake.” Much better. The internet has a short term memory, and even though Rosenberg was brandished with the golden albatross of adapting a group of books with more sizzle than steak in them (aimed at an audience most website runners don’t find themselves in), she also had the good fortune to showcase her talents on a television program with violence, depth, humor, and action. Her abilities in those arenas make her a perfect choice for taking on the material. The bigger question is whether the world needs a reboot of Highlander. Why not? It’s an interesting concept, the original was fun but not masterpiece material, and something has to, has to, has to cleanse the memory of Highlander: The Source from our lives. If there’s anything worth applying a short term memory to, it’s that. Thanks for indulging the inside baseball, but this project sounds incredibly cool. When you look at it the right way. Now about Justin Lin directing… Source: THR

If there’s one thousand things missing from the Twilight series, one of them has got to be a severe lack of undead teen idols sinking their teeth into some meaty placenta. But for the billions of people awaiting the sweet release of finally seeing Edward dig into Bella’s cervix like it’s a plate of spaghetti, disappointment is all that’s left. Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg cleared up some rumors about what’s in the script for Breaking Dawn and what’s being filmed right now regarding the not-at-all-controversial human giving birth to a half-vampire that breaks her ribs and explodes out of her uterus. There’s a lot to look forward to, but… “…would we actually see Edward’s teeth through the placenta? I don’t think so. I don’t think we need to see that…” Damn it, Rosenberg. Give the fans what they want! The people demand placenta biting! [PopSugar]

In this line of work, there often comes a time when the ability to be objective comes in handy. When it feels great to throw away prejudgments and biases and give a movie a chance, no matter how bad its bloodline may be. Such is the case with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. There’s bad blood in this family — really bad blood — in the form of two films that were poorly constructed and shoddily executed on just about every level. But like any interesting rebellious child, Eclipse breaks the mold at the hands of a craftsman. It becomes something new — something oddly watchable, at times enjoyable and surprisingly unlike what has come before.

The last installment of the series just got an Oscar pedigree, and sees the return of its entire main cast.

He’ll be going ahead with his next project, sure, but it looks like comments about quitting the business came in the heat of the moment.

Did you know Eclipse was already in post-production? Well, apparently I didn’t, and the interview still went really well.

I you loved Patriot Games, you might have loved Twilight.