Bummer news for fans of the Twilight movie (possibly) … Catherine Hardwicke, the woman who directed the film (which made $70+ million at the box office on opening weekend) and was on track to direct the movie’s sequel New Moon (and possibly the rest of the franchise), has been fired by the movie studio! Clearly this was a big shock to Hardwicke who, just a few days ago, was giving interviews where she was already talking about her plans for directing the next movie (ie. she was planning to begin filming New Moon around March of ’09 with a 2010 release for the film). I understand that Hardwicke is currently still on the road promoting Twilight as news of her firing is making the rounds. No word yet on who has been chosen to replace her but one thing’s for sure … Catherine Hardwicke will not be making any more films for the Twilight saga:

So the rumors are true. I’ve confirmed that Summit Entertainment is taking Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke off the sequel in this big new franchise. No doubt my news will speed up the studio’s announcement, and Summit will surely scramble to spin this as all going down amicably along the lines that she “couldn’t fit the film into her time frame”. But this terrible news for Hardwicke comes just as she and the Twilight cast are on their European press tour. No doubt, tomorrow’s interviews in France will now focus entirely on what, if anything, Catherine did to deserve this treatment. This also could blow up into a scandal for Summit if it chooses a male director over Hardwicke, whose Twilight easily beat Mimi Leder’s 1998 Deep Impact box office gross as the biggest opener for a female director. That was a record embraced by Hollywood feminists as a sign of growing gal power. Now Hardwicke’s career will surely be damaged by this very public firing because, even though the pic was skewered by critics, it is already a $160M low-cost blockbuster. Summit has started preparing the sequel New Moon, based on Meyer’s second book in the series, and, to contain costs, the studio is considering making third book Eclipse back to back). The word from inside Summit is that Hardwicke, the acclaimed Thirteen director, “was ‘difficult’ and ‘irrational’ during the making of Twilight,” one insider explains to me. “That doesn’t mean anything when you’re talking about a filmmaker because they all are, but still…” (Indeed, Joe Roth and Sony kept saying those things about Julie Taymor on Across The Universe. Yet she made a cult classic and is now directing Marvel/Sony’s Spider-Man for Broadway.) From another of my sources, “Summit didn’t like her. They’re saying the DP [director of photography] Elliot Davis is the one responsible for the film’s sumptuous visual look, that the editor Nancy Richardson had to save the film in post-production, and Summit thought Hardwicke’s [CAA] agent Beth Swofford was alternately ineffectual and hysterical [when it came to controlling her client].” In fact, I’m told that the studio has even had quiet talks with other CAA directors for the last week. “And Swofford never told Hardwicke about that and that she was about to get kicked to the gutter,” an insider tells me. “To add insult to injury, Hardwicke can now look forward to being grilled by the press for days on end, in front of the cast, about why she’s getting shit-canned.”

Damn, that really does suck. Here is a report from MTV just a few days ago where Hardwicke was talking about her plans to begin filming the next movie:

“Well, right now we’re trying to figure out if the studio people, and me, and everyone’s on the same page,” the “Twilight” director explained exclusively to MTV News, addressing the fans who’ve already begun debating where — and with whom — the franchise should go from here. “I want to do ['New Moon'] better than we did ‘Twilight,’ and do it really cool. I definitely don’t want to do it as something just tossed off, like a ‘Saw II’ or something like that. We want to be sure that it’s really going to be great and that everyone’s on the same page. “I would say that the film could be finished by the end of 2009, if not the beginning of 2010; cameras could be rolling in about five months,” Hardwicke said of her March/April timetable, should she return to helm the pic. “We spent about a year and three months getting ['Twilight'] ready, between writing the script and casting. We could probably do things a little bit faster this time, but who knows? It depends. And sometimes you can do things really fast. You can get two editors on, and you can just zip through.”

The report goes on HERE and talks about her vision for the way she was planning to handle the logistics of bringing Jacob‘s character to live in New Moon (read on if you dare but beware of spoilers) but it looks like, at this point, all of her comments are moot. Personally, I think Hardwicke did a great job adapting the book into movie. I agree that it would look very suspicious if the movie studio decides to hand the director’s chair over to a male director. It seems to me that the woman responsible for setting the new box office record for the biggest opening weekend gross by a female director should be allowed to direct the next movie in the franchise. I suspect fans that weren’t happy with the way the movie was adapted might be pleased by this news. I dunno … it seems very wrong to me. What do y’all think? Should Catherine Hardwicke be replaced?

[Photo credit: Bauer-Griffin; Source, Source]