The latest book-series-turned-movie-franchise-in-the-2000s that just got a newly announced TV show is none other than the Twilight Saga. Following the Percy Jackson Disney Plus show and the freshly announced Harry Potter series, it only makes sense that Twilight will get the same treatment.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Twilight TV show is in very early development stages, to the point where it doesn’t have a network or even a writer yet. Lionsgate, the studio that owns the rights to the Twilight Saga, is shopping around for writing talent. Stephenie Meyer, the author of the series, is expected to be involved in the show’s development.
The first Twilight book was published in 2007 and unleashed a wave of paranormal romance onto the young adult book scene. It followed Bella Swan, a totally normal girl who moves to Forks, Washington and meets the mysterious, brooding (and also sparkling) Edward Cullen, who turns out to be a vampire. The series is comprised of four books that were adapted into five live-action movies starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner.
It’s not surprising to see this news coming on the heels of Warner Media announcing a Harry Potter revival. The two franchises both had passionate, strong fanbases in their heydays, which often clashed with one another despite the fact that the books had little in common. It was simply the fact that they were two very popular series that both appealed to young adults in roughly the same time period — and thus, the battle was born.
While popular appeal of Harry Potter has waned in light of author J.K. Rowling’s stances on trans people, support of Twilight has oddly surged forward, with many reclaiming the vampire romance novels in a meme renaissance. Twilight faced criticism at the time and in more recent years for its racist and sexist storytelling tropes, and a lot of the newfound interest in it involves tearing apart the more controversial elements while embracing its ridiculous narrative.
Lionsgate also owns the rights to The Hunger Games — the other super-duper huge YA phenomenon that immediately followed the Twilight/Harry Potter era. But considering that there’s a prequel movie on the way later this year, it’s unlikely that anyone at Lionsgate would be looking to reboot that series for television.
Since there is no other development news for the Twilight show yet, let the fan castings begin! Personally, I think Timothee Chalamet was just born to play someone who died of Spanish influenza in 1901.