A new Hunger Games movie recently came out, and now Lionsgate is eyeing Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight IP as a potential springboard for some new projects; all I need now is a paperback copy of The Outsiders, and I’ll be reliving my middle school days in full.
For real, though, there’s a fine line to walk when it comes to navigating IP; movies have been adapted from novels for well over a century, and yet nowadays, they more or less epitomize the potential for creative pitfalls. This, however, is only really true insofar as the artists involved are susceptible to such pitfalls in the first place.
The news of a Twilight animated series (as reported by Variety) being shopped around by Lionsgate, then, represents the perfect intersection of reckless IP milking and how to pick out healthy remake candidates, hence why said news will likely stir up many an inner conflict no matter what your opinion on the films is.
Indeed, it’s no secret that the live-action film franchise didn’t exactly soar, so giving it another shot with fresher hands and a whole new medium could see the IP thrive on the back of this second chance, and that might be enough for curiosity to win over skepticism for most. On the other hand, it may also be time to accept that the story has already been told in the best way it could have been, and barring an entirely original storyline (and at that point, why even bother with the IP?), one has to wonder if it’s truly worth trying to inject new life into something like Twilight.
Either way, it’s looking like it will be some time before we have the puzzle pieces necessary to make a preemptive call because, at the time of writing, the only information we have on this series is that Sinead Daly (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency) was attached as the scribe as early as last year before it was revealed to be animated, with Wyck Godfrey and Erik Feig pegged as executive producers. It will be a while yet before there’s any casting news or a definitive release window.
(featured image: Summit Entertainment)
