‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn’ Starts Shooting This Fall

Fans still have many months to go until the theatrical release of the third film in “The Twilight Saga,” “Eclipse,” but hype around the fourth and presumably final installment is already gaining momentum. “Breaking Dawn” will come, as per ongoing reports, either divided in two films or as a shortened version of the final novel. Whichever that may turn out to be, production on it starts this fall, producer Wyck Godfrey says for the Los Angeles Times.

We were also telling you the other day that things have reached somewhat of a dead end with “Breaking Dawn,” with novels’ author Stephenie Meyer insisting that it be just one film, while Summit Entertainment is hoping for two flicks for obvious (financial) reasons. That is yet to be determined, Godfrey can now reveal, which means work on the script (or scripts) is also not finished yet. However, one thing that is certain at this point is that production starts this fall, so this means they have little time left to decide which is the best route to take.

“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 [of Bella Swan] 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,” the LA Times writes after speaking to the producer.

“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’,” the publication goes on to quote Godfrey as saying.

As fans who’ve already read Meyer’s fourth book, “Breaking Dawn” is not only the lengthier of the series but also the most controversial. The creative team is having serious issues with the idea of bringing to the big screen a Bella who is, by all means, still a teenager, but also a young mother, Godfrey explains. They have until this autumn to sort this out – as also do Meyer and Summit in terms of deciding how many movies will be made of “Breaking Dawn.”