It’s been a decade since Bella and Edward’s love story galvanized audiences comprised mostly of women and teen girls. “Twilight’s” box office success helped prove the existence of a market hungry for female-led stories. Despite being based on Stephanie Meyer’s best-selling vampire story, Catherine Hardwicke’s film was originally considered an underdog. “It got turned away from every studio,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter in a new interview. “Paramount turned it down, the producers shopped around and went to Fox, it got turned down again. No one thought it was going to be successful. ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’ was a successful girls’ book turned into a movie, and it made $29 million, and I was told that ‘Twilight’ would make about the same amount of money, making our budget really tight,” she recalls.
“Twilight” defied expectations, taking in a whole lot more than $29 million. Made on a budget of $37 million, the 2009 teen pic grossed over $393 million worldwide and spawned a franchise.
“It was great. I was in the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest opening weekend for a female director at that time, which was mind-boggling,” Hardwicke says. “This also made people realize that movies with a female lead would be viable, for example, ‘Divergent’ and ‘The Hunger Games.’ All of those movies wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t broken the mold and beat ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’ at $29 million and proven that movies like this could be successful.”
Bella’s popularity certainly helped pave the way for Katniss and Tris to have their stories told on-screen, but Hardwicke’s success didn’t seem to convince execs of women’s power behind the camera. “Unfortunately, all of the movies I just mentioned — including the next ‘Twilight’ films, the two ‘Divergent’ films, and all of ‘The Hunger Games’ films — were directed by men,” the “Miss You Already” director points out. “They carried the female protagonist but they didn’t continue with a female director. Why didn’t they seek out other women?” she asks.
“It wasn’t until Patty Jenkins directed ‘Wonder Woman’ — that took nine years for another woman to do that,” Hardwicke observes. “We love that Patty did an amazing job and knocked down the prejudice that a woman can’t direct a superhero or action movie. It’s crazy that people think women can’t direct action; I love action and one of my first jobs was in visual effects. Because of this, we need to break down these stereotypes for the future,” she emphasizes.
Of course, Hardwicke herself helped break down those stereotypes — and encouraged “Twilight’s” millions of fans to broaden their conceptions of what a filmmaker looks like. “Something else that is great about this film is that it inspired a lot of creativity. People would make fan art and films that get creative with the content,” she reveals. “I’ve also had people see me introducing the deleted scenes on the DVD and tell me that they saw a woman director and thought that they could be a director too.”
Next year will see the release of “Captain Marvel,” co-directed by Anna Boden. 2020 will mark the return of Diana Prince in “Wonder Woman 1984” — to be helmed by Jenkins in a deal that makes her the highest paid woman director ever. And Ava DuVernay and Cathy Yan have high-profile, big budget comic adaptations on the way. At long last, (some) women directors are being trusted to step behind the camera for genre pics with big investments, and in doing so, will help continue to break down the stereotypes Hardwicke refers to.
Up next for Hardwicke is Gina Rodriguez-starrer “Miss Bala,” an action thriller about a woman who infiltrates a cartel. The film hits theaters February 1, 2019. She’s also signed on to helm “Dissonance,” a fantasy pic about a woman who can walk between different realities.
