The tale of pallid vampires and the melancholy teens that obsess over them will conclude in November 2012 with the release of Part 2 of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.
Back in June, Summit Entertainment confirmed that Breaking Dawn would be released in two parts, a la Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows. Both the final Twilight and boy wizard films are based off thickset novels so there is some artistic justification for the split – the fact that it likely means twice the profit does not hurt either.
Breaking Dawn: Part 1 will arrive next year in November, almost exactly a year before Part 2 is unleashed. That oddly feels like a relatively long period of time, given that the first three Twilight pics were completed and rushed into theaters in less than two years.
Summer 2012 will definitely be a competitive one, with tentopole movies like The Avengers, Star Trek 2, Batman 3, and several others all being unveiled over the course of three months. The choice to move the second half of Breaking Dawn to the fall is a shrewd but wise one on Summit’s part.
Eclipse was an anomaly in that it essentially matched the financial success of New Moon, despite being released around eight months later in theaters. By comparison, The Matrix Revolutions grossed less than half of what The Matrix Reloaded earned in the U.S. when it was released just six months after that second film. There was a valid reason for that, but moving on…
The big concern for Twilight fans at this point relates to Bella and Edward’s increasingly intimate relationship and how it will be portrayed in Breaking Dawn. Franchise screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg has confirmed that most of the graphic material in the book will occur off-screen, though that begs the question – just what WILL moviegoers get to see?
Films like The Dark Knight have been credited for pushing the boundaries of the PG-13 rating, though that was due more to violence rather than sexual content. It will be interesting to see just how risque the final two Twilight flicks end up being at the end of the day (see what I did there?).
Besides – there is always the Unrated DVD release, right? 😉
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 will arrive in theaters in the U.S. on November 18th, 2011. Part 2 will follow on November 16th, 2012.
