It’s nearly impossible to imagine Twilight not becoming the cultural icon and garnering the massive success it has today. However, in the beginning, the film’s crew and cast had very low expectations for the film, including Kristen Stewart.
The Twilight franchise was originally adapted from the popular book series written by author Stephenie Meyer. Although the first film did have loyal readers of the book series as a strong fanbase, it did still receive mainly negative reviews from critics. Twilight follows Bella (Stewart) who ends up moving to Forks, Washington to live with her father when she meets the dark, mysterious Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). She immediately becomes entranced and enamored by him as they further develop their complicated romance due to the fact that he is a vampire. The two are then forced to face the secrets that haunt the Cullen family.
Twilight made its theatrical debut back in 2008, and with a budget of $37 million, the film managed to earn over $400 million dollars at the box office. Twilight was originally presented as a smaller, lower-budget indie movie. The fandom also came in millions, much greater than the crew or cast of the film could have ever foreseen, especially star of the saga, Stewart. In a recent interview with SirusXM, Stewart clarified that although Twilight is viewed as a franchise, it’s still at its core an authentic indie film. She shared, “I always want to remind people of (Twilight being an indie) without being like diminishing or being like ‘Oh, it was nothing!’ That’s not what I’m saying. We just did not know, and it was kind of an oddball, y’know, slightly marginal teen-movie. I didn’t think everyone was going to take to that. I didn’t think we were going to make a sequel.”
The nostalgic awakening for Twilight fans comes as vampires seem to be everywhere at the moment. Vampires, despite how popular they have always been in film, are for some reason all the rage even more than usual right now. With Marvel ushering a brand-new wave of vampirism into the MCU with their latest film, Morbius, and upcoming horror flicks such as Renfield starring Nicolas Cage returning to the Dracula film era, vampires as a whole are drawing massive inspiration.
It’s interesting to hear Stewart originally hesitating over whether the film had universal appeal to it or not, but vampires seem to never really fail with an audience. It also does help that Twilight chose incredible stars such as Stewart and Pattinson, who have gone on to have long-standing, successful careers. Fans can catch Pattinson in his latest film, The Batman, which is in theaters now. Stewart has been gaining a lot of critical acclaim and attention as well for her portrayal of Princess Diana in Spencer, available for streaming now on Hulu.
Twilight is now available on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: SirusXM's YouTube