Breaking Dawn Seeks Indie Director, Oscar's Preferable, For Fun Long Lasting Relationship

With Eclipse set for release in July here in the UK, Summit Entertainment has cast their net in search of a new director to helm part 4 and 5 of the Twilight franchise. The first catches to be reeled in take the form of Bill Condon, Sofia Coppola, and Gus Van Sant.

This calibre of director, is not what you would expect to be within touching distance of the Twilight franchise. However, the financial capabilities of the Breaking Dawn finale, may just be enough to turn their head. According to Entertainment Weekly, Summit has put calls into all three, with only Bill Condon reportedly to have confirmed the approach.

Of the three, Coppola would be the interesting choice to lend gravity to Bella's character choices. Coppola has delved into angst ridden characters, evaluating their beliefs to who they are in context of their surroundings. She is best known for her Oscar winning Lost in Translation starring an aged Bill Murray and young Scarlett Johansson as lost souls in Tokyo, with their off-chance meeting fuelling a tender relationship. Her next directorial effort to hit the big screen is Somewhere, which revolves around a hard living Hollywood actor who is forced to re-examine his life after a surprise visit from his young daughter. 

Van Sant last offering last offering was to depict a biography of gay rights activist Harvey Milk, gaining an Oscar nomination for Milk. Lastly, Bill Condon, who's last big-screen outing was back in 2006 when he directed musical drama Dreamgirls. 

All three directors have crafted Indie film careers, this is telling, and suggests Summit Entertainment have reverted their thinking after replacing Catherine Hardewicke, who had at that point had drug addled teen in Thirteen on her resume, with the more Hollywood inclined Chris Weitz who had just completed The Golden Compass. But, it was Weitz that produced the clunky follow-up New Moon, to Hardewicke's slick Twilight original. 

Breaking Dawn the fourth installment of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Franchise is set to be split in to two separate outings, with screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg already toiling with the adaptation. There is uncertainty behind such decision to split one book into two outings, but it is not the only one of its kind in development, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and The Hobbit also heading in the same direction.

This will be the fourth change of director to the franchise, and it is the most telling. The complexity of delivering Breaking Dawn in its split form has sent the studio searching wider than one could have imagined, and as yet any director could be at the helm when the production begins later this year. 

MATT RICHARDSON