EXCLUSIVE: TWILIGHT MANIA

Claudia Flores-Lauren Graham-Courtney Hall

The Twilight Movie, out in theatres on November 21st, is based on a book adaptation from Stephanie Meyer’s story, “Twilight”. It is directed by Catherine Hardwick, who was actually born in McAllen, TX. It is the first feature length film of many to come from a series of three other books including: New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. The movie is centered on Bella Swan, who is a young teenage girl that risks everything when she falls in love with a beautiful vampire named Edward Cullen. The elements most emphasized in both the trailers and posters follow the same approach by focusing on the two main characters played by Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. It shows a developing relationship filled with constant conflict and most especially, it gives fans of the popularized saga a visual image of the characters now being portrayed on screen. There are even several posters and trailers made from actual fans that can’t seem to get enough of Twilight. Overall, the thread for this movie has become so successful with the final trailer featured above and two shorter teaser trailers. Most all of them have been translated into Italian, German, and even French.

Summit Entertainment, the distributors of the film, are selling this movie for the growing fan-base by letting people subscribe to Summit’s mailing list through the official site in order to receive up to date information regarding new trailers, photos, and twilight-related quizzes. The official Twilight site has an image and video gallery, movie synopsis, cast and crew, production info, links to fan sites, contests, and even the worldwide release dates. There are blog-type updates for eager fans to sink their teeth into. We think the target audience is similar to that of the Harry Potter Franchise, but they are also trying to bring a larger audience gap between early teens to late twenty year olds. Latest full length trailer is bringing the appeal to both men and women in that it has some action in fighting scenes involving good verses bad vampires. Most importantly, an unforbidden romance between a human and an immortal.

There are more than 280 fan sites dedicated to the movie including such top sites as Bella and Edward, Twilight Lexicon, and Twilighters which include pictures, wallpapers, ringtones, message boards, and video clips.Various places sell merchandise for the film such as Hot Topic, which sell shirts, posters, buttons, and key chains while the Inkworks site has premium trading cards available to purchase. Amazon has even gotten in on the action by selling the complete Twilight Saga Collection and The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion. Another online store, Fueled by Ramon, is featuring a pre-order combo which includes the soundtrack, t-shirt, and bookmark all for $24.00.

As a group, we were unable to find any pirated versions of the film, in such sites as Movie6. On the other hand, were able to find different critical reviews such as the Movie-Fanatic Review, which comments on the newest trailer just recently distributed. VMan Magazine has an article with pictures of the male cast showcasing a preview of the film. The Hollywood Reporter also dishes on the pros and cons of the franchise, while Reelz Channel has a new video which guides those interested about the cast and characters of the Twilight phenomenon.