No Moon for Hardwicke

Basking in the glow of not having any more TWILIGHT news to report on every other day comes news from Summit Entertainment and director Catherine Hardwicke regarding TWILIGHT’s sequel, NEW MOON. Normally I’d be screaming to the gods that I’d rather report on rat poo, but I’m finding this to be a bitter sweet news story, so I’ll let it slide… this time.

Summitt and Hardwicke jointly announced over the weekend that Hardwicke will NOT be returning as director of NEW MOON. The reason? Timing. Summit wants NEW MOON fast-tracked to late 2009 / early 2010 (so in about a year from now), and that’s just not enough prep time for Hardwicke to bring her vision of MOON to the big screen. So… she stepped away from the project.

I’m not sure who the biggest loser is. On the one hand, Hardwicke had a chance to direct an entire franchise of movies (she doesn’t really have anything else going for her, so why not?) and she threw it away for scheduling issues; on the other hand, Summit should have realized that there just isn’t enough time to make a quality sequel so maybe they should push it back to spring, or even summer 2010. Either way, they’re both losers.

So now the hunt is on for a new director to take NEW MOON to a new direction, and to spawn an equally over-hyped phenomenon that its predecessor created. My suggestion? Brett Ratner. Seems like just the right kind of talent and caliber for a movie like this…