An Open Letter to Summit: Stop Trying to Destroy David Slade's & Other Director's Careers with Your Shitty "Twilight" Series

By: Adam Quigley Posted: April 23, 2009 Filed under: Official Info

Lousy source material is lousy source material, no matter who you get to try to spruce it up. Summit Entertaiment is apparently unaware of this though, as they have now officially signed on director David Slade (of 30 Days of Night and Hard Candy previously) to helm the third film in the Twilight saga, Eclipse. This is following an earlier offer that had gone out to director Juan Antonio Bayona (The Orphanage), which he thankfully turned down.

And when I say 'thankfully', what I should be saying is 'unsurprisingly'. Because why the hell wouldn't he turn the offer down? The Twilight book series is nothing more than the result of one sad, slightly overweight middle-aged Mormon woman's overly elaborate and depressing erotic fantasy, which was then marketed to little girls and topped off with a nice big helping of 'shit' and 'fail' in the storytelling department. No self-respecting filmmaker with that much talent would ever subject themself to such a depressing career low by actually agreeing to bring something like that to the big screen.

Or so I thought.

30 Days of Night may not have been the most satisfying directorial follow-up to an impressive debut, but it did confirm what we had already suspected after Hard Candy, proving that David Slade has a unique style all his own and all he needs is a strong script to help utilize it. (So much for that, eh?) And issues aside, it's undeniably superior to Twilight in literally every way. At least it has actual vampires in it. The same cannot be said for Stephanie Meyer's shameful abortion of the vampire mythology. Let's compare:

The decision-making process here is puzzling to me. Why would Slade want to go from a hard-R vampire horror flick to girly, homoerotic pre-teen vampire fantasy bullshit? Is he really that desperate for a paycheck?

Whatever the answer, David Slade is so much better than this, and no amount of talent in the director's chair is going to make something as horribly written and downright laughable as the Twlight series into decent cinema.

Summit clearly thinks otherwise though, so instead of hiring on some cheap, talentless hacks to assist them in continuing their latest (and maybe only) cash cow, they've been looking toward up-and-coming indie directors with a keen visual sense and an ability to work on the cheap. Normally I'd be encouraging this type of behaivor from studios, as it's very rare to see anyone in Hollywood actively seek out creative filmmakers who haven't yet found massive box-office success. But given that the films in question are in fact part of the Twilight saga, my response instead is this:

Stop.

Please, fucking stop.

You've already got David Slade. Isn't that enough? I beg of you, don't disgrace the names of anymore talented directors. It's not like it's going to make a difference. The films will suck either way. And the fans won't even notice. They'll be too dusy drooling over Robert Pattinson's sparkly "vampire" cock. You realize that, right? Your audience doesn't care about quality filmmaking or good storytelling. They just want silly forbidden romances and passionate vampire make-out sessions. Give them that, and they'll be happy. Meanwhile, you won't piss off the people who actually care about the shame that's guaranteed to befall any filmmakers when it turns out they in fact can't turn a dried-up piece of dog shit into a delicious ice cream sundae. Sure, you can have them cover it in chocolate syrup, but it's still gonna taste like dog shit.