As fans know, the vampires of Twilight have a different set of rules from the standard lore. When author Stephenie Meyer first sold the movie rights, she quickly found that Hollywood wasn't respecting the world she had created. "I actually sold the rights to a different company [first]," Meyer told ReelzChannel at this weekend's Twilight junket.
"I got a look at the script and, you know, objectively [it was] probably a decent vampire movie. [But] it had nothing at all to do with Twilight. That was kind of a horrifying experience. I had realized that they could do it wrong and it could go badly, but that they would do something that had nothing to do at all with the story was really shocking to me."
Luckily, that film didn't pan out, so Meyer got a welcome do-over. "[When] Summitt said, 'We really want to do this,' I was wary," says Meyer. "I said, 'What if I give you a list of things that absolutely can't be changed?'" Summit agreed and Meyer provided her list.
"It was very fundamental outlined things like the vampires have to have the basic rules of the vampires I've created -- no fangs, they sparkle in the sunlight; the characters have to exist by their present names and in their present form; you can't kill anyone who doesn't die in the book."
"I got it in writing," Meyer said with a big smile, adding that "It was a really pleasant exchange from the very beginning."