'Twilight' the new 'Gone With the Wind?'

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson  Photo:  Kimberly French (c) Summit Ent. 2009

David A. Slade, director of "Twilight Saga:  Eclipse" is living and breathing the movie.  Yesterday, he wrote:

"As I sit here cutting I find out that I am going to miss an exhibit of one of my favourite artists Jeremy Fish."

He had already noted:

"Working Sunday, battle sequences coming together, first half of film feeling very emotional, still early days."

Post-production on a movie can take longer than shooting it. Half a million feet of film were shot on “Gone With the Wind,” edited down to about 20,000. Clearly the “Twilight” films would involve less, and the movies are shorter, but the math gives you an idea of what a director and editor face during post-production.

It’s probably a little too easy to compare the “Twilight” movies to “Gone With the Wind,” but there are real similarities, particularly in terms of the avid interest by the predominantly female fans.  And the “Twilight” movies are taking up as much of the principals' lives. After an extensive period of development, script rewrites and pre-production, “Gone With the Wind” was in principal photography for six months, during which time they went through no fewer than four directors. The finished film was roughly twice the length of a standard “A” feature of the time. After approximately nine months of total shooting, Summit Entertainment has released two movies and has a third in post-production. Three directors have already been involved.
 

Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable  Photo:  www.imdb.com

The authors of both “Twilight” and “Gone With the Wind” were attractive housewives who came out of nowhere insofar as the literary world was concerned. Margaret Mitchell, author of “Gone With the Wind,” had been a journalist, but had never written a novel. She was only in her thirties when she wrote what would become one of the bestselling books of all time and earn her a Pulitzer Prize. Mitchell was a journalist recuperating from a broken ankle when she wrote her only novel.

Meyer was thirty when she published the first of her “Twilight” novels. She has publicly stated on numerous occasions that the idea for the first novel came to her in a dream, and she wrote “Twilight” in one summer, then rapidly obtained a literary agent who had a book deal within a month.

Readers and filmgoers invested emotionally in the stories and characters in both cases. Twihards often identify themselves as “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob.” “Gone With the Wind” readers and moviegoers debated (often still debate) whether or not Scarlett O’Hara is a strong female protagonist or just a bitch, and whether they like the dashing, macho Rhett over the intellectual, sensitive Ashley.

Margaret Mitchell never wrote a sequel to “Gone With the Wind,” but then the one novel is well over a thousand pages long.

Both “Gone With the Wind” and “Twilight” were produced by “mini-majors.” David O. Selznick, producer of “Gone With the Wind,” formed his own studio after years working first at RKO, where he produced, among others, “King Kong,” and then MGM, the biggest and most prestigious of the studios during Hollywood’s “golden age.” He bought the rights to the novel “Gone With the Wind” for a record-breaking $50 thousand during the Great Depression. Selznick International did not have the resources to make and market the film on its own, and besides, it was clear that the majority of the novel’s fans wanted Clark Gable for the role of Rhett Butler. Gable was under contract to MGM, and so Selznick had to make a deal with his father-in-law and former employer, Louis B. Mayer.
 

"Gone With the Wind"   Photo: www.img2.allposters.com/images/

Summit Entertainment is not as big as say, Paramount, Sony, Warner Brothers or Universal. But it does have the rights to the “Twilight” series locked up. It made “Twilight” for less than $40 million and made back close to ten times that much. The second movie in the series cost more but will probably make more. It’s already passed the $200 million mark at the box office and is chugging along steadily.

Robert Pattinson, who plays vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen in the “Twilight” movies, could do well to take some cues from Gable, one of the great male movie stars of all time. Gable had a long and varied career following “Gone With the Wind,” starring alongside some of the greatest leading ladies in film history, including Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Lana Turner, Doris Day, Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe.

Pattinson has already filmed the romantic drama “Remember Me,” with Emilie de Ravin, Pierce Brosnan, Martha Plimpton, Chris Cooper and Lena Olin, and is attached to the movies “Unbound Captives” and “Bel Ami,” both in pre-production. He is featured in “Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” in post-production, and is believed to be committed to “Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn,” in development.

Kristen Stewart, the big screen’s Bella, perhaps could look at Vivien Leigh’s life as a cautionary tale. Still, though haunted by serious mental illness throughout her life and career, she worked often both before and after “Gone With the Wind,” doing more stage work than movies. Her best known post “GWTW” movie is “A Streetcar Named Desire,” in which she co-starred with Brando, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden.

Stewart has completed work on “Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” as well as the films “Welcome to the Rileys” and “The Runaways,” which also features rocker Joan Jett. She is also expected to reprise her role as Bella in “Breaking Dawn.”

As to the last installment of the series, Variety reports that Summit Entertainment is seriously considering breaking “Dawn” into two movies. The problem with that is that it would double the checks that have to be signed. The principal cast is believed to be only locked up for four films. If "Breaking Dawn" becomes two pictures, all of the key cast members will be in a position to ask for, and get, big raises, possibly into the eight-figure range.

 That's what happened with key cast members when Warner Bros. extended its blockbuster "Harry Potter" franchise by turning J.K. Rowling's last book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," into two films that will be released in November 2010 and July 2011 respectively.

No one had heard of J.K. Rowling before she sold her first book, either.