Five The Twilight Saga Spin-Off Films Announced

Source: Sputnik Reviews

Consider our year well and truly spoiled - Edward and Bella Cullen are back with a bite.
Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment have this week announced the development of a series of short spin-off films based in the world of their critically divisive Twilight franchise. Initially conceived by American novelist Stephenie Meyer, the so-called Twilight Saga hit the big-screen in 2007 with Twilight before bouncing back with the likes of New Moon, Eclipse and most notably a two-part adaptation of Meyer's similarly fandom-splitting final instalment Breaking Dawn.

Quite unlike any of their predecessors, the vignette-esque motion pictures in question won't début in theatrical auditoriums; instead, they'll première on Facebook as part of a collaboration between the social networking website, Lionsgate (the studio which produced each cinematic instalment of The Twilight Saga and therefore retains the rights to the series) and Women In Film under the collective title of The Storytellers: New Voices of The Twilight Saga. The series - as its name suggests - will prioritize aspiring female helmers in a commendable effort to dissolve the curiously persistent notion that the most accomplished directors derive from the other sex, with lead star Kristen Stewart and even Meyer herself currently set to spearhead the panel of judges selected to decide upon just which entrants in the production team's open competition (more details on which can be found here) will receive the chance to take to the director's chair for a project of monolithic proportions.

Thankfully, the metaphorical story doesn't look set to stop there, either. Despite the baffling extent to which The Twilight Saga's fandom has grown in recent years, we're under no illusion about the fact that hordes and hordes of film fanatics would like nothing less than to see each and every copy of the film cast into the furnace and forever dismissed. It seems that Lionsgate may well recognise this, if the following comments from their vice chairman, Michael Burns, are anything to go by: "This [series] is just the beginning - a template, if you will. You can probably guess what's coming next." Odds are that Burns is referring to The Hunger Games here, since that's by far Lionsgate's second most popular brand (indeed, it's well on its way to eclipsing Twilight these days), one which we're sure the studio will want to utilize their advantage as the third and final instalments - Mockingjay Part 1 and Part 2 respectively - near ever closer (for better or for worse, once we've experienced Part 1 in a month or so's time, we'll simultaneously have born witness to the fantasy saga's penultimate outing). Keep it locked at On-Screen in the coming days to find out all the latest gossip on what's next for The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games, Divergent and plenty of Lionsgate's other best-selling franchises....

The Storytellers: New Voices of The Twilight Saga will take a bite out of Facebook news feeds worldwide in 2015.