From The LA Times:

It’s been one of the biggest ques­tions sur­round­ing Sum­mit Entertainment’s uber-successful “Twi­light” fran­chise (apart, of course, from whether stars Kris­ten Stew­art and Robert Pat­tin­son really are a cou­ple off-screen) — just how the pro­duc­ers are going to man­age to pull off a big-screen adap­ta­tion of “Break­ing Dawn.” The fourth book in Stephe­nie Meyer’s jug­ger­naut of a young adult fic­tion series about the epic love affair between high school stu­dent Bella Swan and her good-guy vam­pire beau Edward Cullen has plenty of heft, clock­ing in at upward of 750 pages, but it also has the dis­tinc­tion of being the most con­tro­ver­sial entry in the saga.

When it was released in August 2008, fan reac­tion was intense and divided with some “Twi-hards” express­ing con­fu­sion and dis­may over a plot that involved *SPOILER ALERT* a recently grad­u­ated  19-year-old Bella giv­ing birth to a half-human/half-vamp daugh­ter named Renes­mee, who grows much faster than the aver­age mor­tal child and who pos­sesses a unique way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with those around her, clearly inher­ited from Dad’s side of the family.

Wyck God­frey, the pro­ducer of all the films in the “Twi­light” saga, admits that the cre­ative team still doesn’t know how they’ll han­dle the char­ac­ter in the “Break­ing Dawn” movie, but said that the plan is absolutely for the pro­duc­tion to go for­ward — as either one or two install­ments — with an eye toward begin­ning to shoot in Van­cou­ver this fall. All three stars are signed for “Break­ing Dawn,” he said, mean­ing that Stew­art and Pat­tin­son will be deal­ing with the joys and woes of inter­species par­ent­ing and newly minted heart­throb Tay­lor Laut­ner will return as often-shirtless shape-shifter Jacob Black.

At the moment, screen­writer Melissa Rosen­berg, who’s penned all the “Twi­light” movies, is work­ing on the “Break­ing Dawn” script(s). “It’s a work in process,” God­frey said in an inter­view Fri­day. “The issue [of whether there will be one or two movies] is not going to be resolved until we get the full treat­ment and see whether it’s organic. If it’s not organic, I don’t think it will be done, and if it is, it will be. It really has to do with how much level of detail from the books there is, with all of these new vam­pires that appear in ‘Break­ing Dawn,’ the whole sec­tion about Jacob… It’s a very long sin­gle movie if it does become a sin­gle movie.”

Although there’s been a great deal of online chat­ter about whether Chris Weitz, direc­tor of the sec­ond and most recent movie, “New Moon,” would return to helm “Break­ing Dawn,” God­frey down­played that pos­si­bil­ity, say­ing, “I think every­one would be happy and excited if he came back, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

He and the other prin­ci­pals are for­mu­lat­ing a list of poten­tial direc­tors, “but right now,” God­frey said, “we’re just focused on the treat­ment and get­ting that right. At that point, we’re going to see who’s avail­able and who’s appro­pri­ate. It’s such a com­pli­cated book because you have the emo­tions and the inten­sity of the love story — so you need some­body who’s just a won­der­ful direc­tor of actors — and yet it’s really com­pli­cated from an action and visual effects stand­point. They’ve got to have both tools in their kit.”

A visual effects back­ground might be par­tic­u­larly help­ful when it comes to deal­ing with the char­ac­ter of Renesmee.

“I keep hav­ing visions of ‘[The Curi­ous Case of] Ben­jamin But­ton’ in my head,” God­frey said, refer­ring to David Fincher’s Oscar-nominated 2008 fan­tasy about a man who becomes phys­i­cally younger as he ages. “It’s cer­tainly going to be visual effects in some capac­ity along with an actor. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if it ends up being a full CG cre­ation, but it also may be a human shot on a sound­stage that then is used to shrink down. I don’t know. We need a direc­tor. When we get a direc­tor, that direc­tor will need to come with a point of view of how they want to tackle it.”

The third movie in the series, “The Twi­light Saga: Eclipse,” is due in the­aters June 30.

– Gina McIntyre

Source: LA Times via RP Life