More than a decade has gone by since the Twilight Saga ran its course on the big screen, with five movies telling the story of the four books in author Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. So, of course, Lionsgate is working to figure out ways to revive the franchise. While there are some side stories and reimaginings that could still be brought to the screen (Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined swaps the genders of the lead characters, Midnight Sun tells the story of the first Twilight book from the perspective of a different character, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is a novella featuring one of the vampires from the saga), it doesn’t seem like they’re interested in greenlighting any of those projects. Last year, it was announced that a Twilight TV series was in development – and now Variety has confirmed that Lionsgate Television is shopping around a small screen version of the story – not as a live-action show, but an animated series!
Michael Burns, vice chairman of Lionsgate, brought up the project during a media conference, saying, “We’re going to go out with the Twilight series, an animated series, I think there’ll be a lot of interest in that.” That was the same conference where he also revealed that another John Wick-related TV series is also in the works.
When we first heard that Lionsgate would be taking Twilight to TV, it was said that Meyer was expected to be involved with the series, with Wyck Godfrey and Erik Feig serving as executive producers. Feig was the executive at Summit Entertainment (formerly a standalone studio, now a Lionsgate label) who bought the Twilight film rights after Paramount Pictures’ MTV Films had put the project through three years of development hell. Godfrey’s company Temple Hill produced all five of the films, which earned a total of more than $3 billion at the global box office.
The first of the Twilight movies was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who recently suggested that Jenna Ortega and Jacob Elordi would be good choices to star in a reboot.
Do you agree with Lionsgate Television that a Twilight animated series would be a great idea? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.