Yesterday, Summit Entertainment issued a press release officially confirming one David Slade (NOT David Spade!) as the director for Eclipse, the third film in the Twilight series and also, incidentally, my favorite of the four books. I'm not sure about all the director-switching shenanigans, but apparently it's largely due to Summit's frantic movie-shooting pace-Eclipse has a June 2010 release date, pushed up partially because of the whole "Cullen family can't age" thing but mostly, I'm imagining, because no one wants it to be pitted against Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I, which is due for release in November 2010. Because of all the post-production responsibilities, Chris Weitz, director of the currently-shooting New Moon, wasn't a viable option for helming the third movie. Now, we don't really know much yet about the direction Weitz has taken in New Moon, but he looks to be something of a traditional guy, a "by-the-books" sort, and he has boatloads of experience, particularly with special effects. Most fans feel confident that the movie is in the right hands.
But what about this David Slade (NOT Spade!) character? His most well known films, thus far, are Hard Candy, a slightly disturbing-wait, scratch that-VERY disturbing-sounding but well-received drama starring a pre-Juno Ellen Page, and 30 Days of Night, a film adaptation of a graphic novel about, yes, bloodthirsty, savage vampires decimating an entire town in the land of the midnight sun. As I've mentioned on numerous occasions, I'm something of a fan of the decently scary horror film, so I'd actually seen 30 Days of Night. Once I heard about David Slade nabbing the plum spot of director of Eclipse, I decided to watch it again, because it's been on my Netflix Instant Queue. I seemed to remember it being dark, somewhat grainy, and fast-moving, with not a memorable amount of gore (mostly because blood just isn't as shocking when it appears as rivers of black on icy snow banks at night).
Um, it was MUCH worse than I remembered. In terms of scary and bloody, I mean.
I would say I'm alarmed, but perhaps it will be visually dynamic to have a more terrifying army of newborn vampires rapidly approaching Forks than what a less-experienced-in-terrifying-vampire films-director could produce. Just keep in mind, David Slade, your Eclipse vampires should look a whole lot more like Josh Hartnett and a whole lot less like the freakish, animalistic, strange-language-spewing characters in the town of Barrow, Alaska. No horrific, medieval, blood and gore-encrusted sets of teeth, either! Speed, agility, and inhuman strength are perfectly acceptable traits, though. And perhaps you can re-enlist Ben Foster as Riley?
Who am I kidding? I'd be on board with practically any grand special effect so long as the heartwrenchingly sweet, perfectly romantic moments in the third book are preserved.
Might we be able to sign up Josh Hartnett for a future role as Garrett the Patriot?
4 comments:
Hard Candy was actually a really good flick. I am sure that Eclipse will be better than Twilight. The production value is going to be through the roof since Twilight did so well. I am interested to see how New Moon is done because I didn't like that installment all that much.
New Moon was physically painful for me to get through, but I now have a fondness and appreciation for it. I've been delving into quite a lot of juvenile fiction lately-The Hunger Games was GREAT, and now I'm reading "If I Stay"-helps my librarian mom to be able to share an opinion about new books.
It's got to get dark at some point. At least darker than what's been out so far (the first flick was a gloss over). And, Hard Candy was an excellent movie with a terrific approach in direction. I'm excited.
So I definitely need to see Hard Candy, it would appear :)
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