10 Years after Twilight, Catherine Hardwicke Knows She Deserved More

Director Catherine Hardwicke was just weeks away from the start of production on Twilight, her 2008 adaptation of the best-selling Y.A. vampire series, when she got an alarming note from the films studio, Summit Entertainment. “They came to me and said, Youve got to find a way to cut $4 million out of the budget in the next four days, or were pulling the plug,” she remembered in recent interview, 10 years after the films release.

Hardwicke and her team raced through the script, blotting out action sequences, pulling effects, chopping anything they could from their already relatively slim budget. All told, they would spend about $37 million—including marketing and buying the rights for the book back from Paramount. Hardwicke remained hopeful that once the executives saw what she had to slash in order to meet their demand—big stunts and set pieces, a.k.a. franchise movie magic—they would realize the error of their ways.

Alas: “They did not,” Hardwicke said, laughing. “They said, Great, glad you cut it. And then we made the movie.”

A decade later, its still miraculous what Hardwicke was able to do on that budget. Twilight, the story of a teen girl who falls in with an impossibly beautiful family of vampires—now being celebrated with a special Blu-ray and 4K release by Lionsgate—made a startling $69 million in its opening weekend. It eventually grossed $393 million worldwide, spawning four more films and catalyzing a Y.A. franchise boom that gave rise to series like The Hunger Games and Divergent, as well as the Fifty Shades franchise (itself based, originally, on Twilight fanfiction) and the post-blockbuster cinematic oeuvre of stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.

Not bad, considering an executive once told Hardwicke that her film might be interesting, at most, to about 400 girls in Salt Lake City.

“They kept saying that to shoot the cost down, but it was a perfect storm at the time,” the director said.

Summit initially recruited Hardwicke based on her earlier work, gritty stories about teenagers, like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown.. The company handed her five potential scripts, including Twilight—all of which she rejected. “I did not respond to any of them,” she said. “I just threw em all in the trash.” It wasnt until she read Stephenie Meyers book for herself that she realized Twilight had potential. Hooked by its hopeless romance, Hardwicke returned to Summit and asked if she could tackle the film, so long as she could rework the script. She got the green light.

From there, she began searching for stars to play her leads: a teen girl and the brooding vampire she loves. She found her Bella in Stewart, then a star on the indie circuit who had just made a memorable turn in Into the Wild. To track down the perfect Edward, Hardwicke ran chemistry tests between Stewart and four potential co-stars. “It was like blind-date central,” Hardwicke said. “I knew Michael Angarano, her boyfriend at the time, because he was in [my film] Lords of Dogtown, so I kinda felt guilty. Like, Oh my God, Im making your girlfriend kiss these other guys!”

Hardwicke and Stewart eventually settled on Pattinson, another rising star whose biggest credit thus far was as doomed Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But after he got the role, the young actor nearly ruined everything when it came time to win over Summit execs. He turned up to their initial meeting looking especially scruffy, wearing a dirty shirt and sporting bad hair dye from his last acting gig.

“He was a bit disheveled,” Hardwicke admitted. The executives werent impressed: “Can this guy look good?” she remembered them asking. Hardwicke assured them that with a little cleanup, he would transform into a brooding, handsome, ethereal movie star. She got her way and the adaptation clicked into gear. A sparkling vampire franchise was born.

After the films blockbuster success, Pattinson and Stewart instantly ascended to full-fledged stardom. Though both could have stuck to blockbusters, theyve each won critical praise by leaning more toward smaller, more auteurish offerings in their post-Twilight years. Hardwicke decided against directing the second Twilight film, because it would require too tight of a turnaround; if she had said yes, she barely would have had a chance to breathe after postproduction and promotion for the first movie. (Twilight came out in November 2008; New Moon hit theaters just one year later.)

The director wasnt initially worried about what would come next for her. After all, she had just turned around an enormous blockbuster on a relatively tight budget, courting a slew of devoted new fans in the process; offers should have been pouring in.

But Hardwicke found that she couldnt even get in the room for certain gigs. Instead, she stood by as a craze her film began barreled forward—without her, or directors like her. After Twilights success, Hardwicke notes, there were four more Twilights, three big-screen Divergents, four Hunger Games—and “none of them were directed by women!” she said, still incredulous. “That was a heartbreak for me. There are other badass women out there that could have done those.”

Its a problem that goes beyond Y.A. fare, Hardwicke pointed out. Hollywood has a tendency to hand projects written by and starring women over to male filmmakers: “Theres lots of projects like that,” she said, running through a laundry list of examples. “It goes on and on. Theyre stories written by women, about women, and given to male directors. Over and over and over.”

Hardwicke is grateful, at least, that shes no longer one of the only female directors to launch a major blockbuster franchise; Sam Taylor-Johnson (who directed the first Fifty Shades) and Patty Jenkins (of Wonder Woman fame) have picked up the torch. “Patty kicked everybodys ass,” Hardwicke said—though Jenkins only got that chance after a long fallow period. Fourteen years elapsed between her Academy Award-winning film Monster and the release of Wonder Woman. Hardwicke, too, has a surprisingly short list of credits since directing Twilight: a handful of television episodes, two indies, and Red Riding Hood, a studio reimagining of the old fairy tale starring Amanda Seyfried. The 2011 film ended up disappointing at the box office and getting walloped by critics, stunting renewed momentum in Hardwickes blockbuster career.

But after that dip period, her upcoming slate is looking full again; she recently completed an English-language adaptation of the Mexican thriller Miss Bala, starring Gina Rodriguez and Anthony Mackie, which will be released by Sony, and is working on a fantasy project called Dissonance. Hardwicke is also still fielding attention from producers who seek her out at events and tell her about the exciting female-led projects theyre working on. Often, though, when she asks if any female directors are on board, theyll balk. “Ive had producers say, We tried to have diversity. You tried—and you hired a white male again. So how hard did you try?” she asked.

Hardwicke sighed. “Anyway—thinking positive.”

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