Assignment 3-1

Twilight started out as a series of six books by author Stephenie Meyers. The series is popular mainly among teenage girls. The first book came out in 2005. The movie came out in November 2008 taking the opening slot of the latest Harry Potter movie which was postponed until spring 2009. These books were compared to the Harry Potter series and by taking over this opening day the comparison only became stronger. Both series of books are geared toward the same age group the Twilight books do not have nearly the following that Harry Potter does.
Twilight is the story of a vampire, Edward Culler, who as a crush on an average teenage girl, Bella Swan. Bella is not an ordinary teenager not worrying about fitting in and instead looking for something different. Edward seems to be a great guy, witty and handsome. However, as it turns out he is a vampire who has not aged in almost 100 years. He comes from a clan that does not feed on human blood, instead choosing to hunt animals to satisfy their need for blood. This causes a problem because while he does not want to hurt her, the closer they get the harder it gets for him to resist the urge to kill her for her blood. The story follows them as they learn to deal with the problems caused by their romance. When another group of vampires comes to town they also cause an obstacle for the young couple to deal with.
The studio had very low expectations for this movie only hoping to cover the $40 million that it cost to make the movie in the first place. However, the movie made almost $70 million on its opening weekend and $100 million in its first ten days. The director, Catherine Hardwick, set a record for the highest grossing opening-weekend for a female director. This was enough to cause the studio to green light the creation and filming of the second movie in this series, New Moon. Because of the success of the first installment the second movie will receive a larger budget and therefore will include better special effects than its predecessor.