Golden Compass Director To Helm Twilight 2?

It was pretty shocking to me when I heard the news that Twilight director, Catherine Hardwicke, would not be returning to direct the sequel. Twilight made truck loads of money and because the highest opening weekend box office take of any film directed by a woman in history. Yes it met with some critical abuse… but when the film makes big money that usually doesn’t matter. So last week the studio and Hardwicke jointly announced (rather suspiciously I might add) that Hardwicke would not be returning to the sequel do to a scheduling conflict (yeah right). So ever since then the question has been… who will direct Twilight 2?

The rumor going around right now is that the director of “The Golden Compass”, Chris Weitz (who also directed “About a Boy” which I thought was wonderful) has been offered the gig for both Twilight 2 and 3 (which are rumored to be shooting back to back. The following comes from Deadline Hollywood:

I don’t have official confirmation yet that this Twilight sequel offer has gone out to Weitz. But my insider says another reason it came down is because Weitz and Summit’s president of production Eric Feig are longtime pals. The source tells me Weitz is “still considering” the offer to helm New Moon and possibly also Eclipse if the sequel and threequel movie adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s series of vampire books are made back-to-back. But let’s also not forget Weitz’s behavior on Golden Compass. On December 15, 2004, Weitz announced his resignation as director of the trilogy, citing the enormous technical challenges of the epic and later admitting he was worried about dissing by the book’s fans.

Wow… if this guy was afraid of The Golden Compass fans… he should probably fear for his life from the Twilight fans. These people are absolutely insane about these books, and I’m pretty sure if you screw up their story, they’ll put a Boba Fett sized price on your head… or they’ll just kill you with their own hands.

Personally, I think that if this rumor is true, it’s not a bad pick at all. I really enjoyed how he handled About A Boy and I don’t think Compass turned out as badly as it could have. Guess we’ll have to wait and see if this one turns out to be true.

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16 thoughts on “Golden Compass Director To Helm Twilight 2?

  1. the goldencompass was terrible!!!! he didnt even end it were the book ended and the scenes were all messed up. i think it would be terrible he directed new moon. they should really slow down the production so they can acctualy make a good movie and get the director from twilight back. she kept it rather close to the book and made a fairly good movie.

  2. well the movie got an oscar over transformers for the special effects

    thats a good thing, you need THE BEST if you want to get the werewolves morphing right….this is good

  3. I’m on the fence about Weitz. I really liked About a Boy and his ability to direct a heart felt story is a plus for Twilight which deals with the erractic emotions of first love. The Golden Compass I didn’t like very much at all, but it had its moments. I wouldn’t be bummed if he is the next director. He’s already dealt with crazy fan hate, so maybe he can better tune out the whines of all idiot twitards who can’t be made happy unless every line from the book is included in the movie.

  4. Weitz isn’t a bad choice at all- and Feig having him could have some more (at least indirect) influence in the projects. It makes sense to me. As for Compass- it was a darned if you do and darned if you don’t situation: he was hit hard by the “fans” of Compass who thought the film should have more of the agnostic tone of the books, and even adapting the book as best he could, he got hit by the religious right even though most of the “anti-God” themes were toned down.

    I seen the film, thought it was a garbled mess near the halfway mark. The FX was decent though.

    But let’s play fair. Some of the ‘Twilight’ fans even disliked the way Hardwicke directed the first; others did not. You cannot please everyone. I think the same arguement applies to Weitz. In doing Compass, he could not please everyone. That’s really not his job. It’s good if it happens like that, but his job is to make the best film he can over the material(s) he is given.

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