Making a Twilight sequel isn’t going to be cheap. Stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, who were each paid $2 million for the first film, will be getting enormous pay raises. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Pattinson and Stewart will be paid $12 million each for the sequel, New Moon. It’s worth noting that the first film was made for only $37 million. Sounds like the budget will be upped considerably for the sequel. I think I’m going to be sick.

After the exceptional opening day performance of Twilight, Summit Entertainment has officially greenlit that the sequel, New Moon. The film will be moving forward into production, but no production start or release dates have yet been announced. Read the full press release after the jump.

I always admire any movie that can effectively convey the trials and tribulations of high school without resorting to parody or mockery. High school is typically (and rightfully) portrayed as a time of great emotional upheaval, where friendships are formed and broken, alliances are tested, and worldviews are carved into one’s character. Given the setting’s potential for some great (melo)drama, it seems as though director Catherine Hardwicke, whose critically acclaimed Thirteen also dealt with the hardships of teenage life, would be a perfect choice to direct Twilight. Indeed, Twilight is at its strongest when it’s offering its spin on high school romance. Virtually every element of angst-filled adolescence is on [...]

Summit Entertainment has released the first teaser trailer for Astro Boy. It looks like it could be cool, but then again, so did IMAGI’s TMNT, and that film ended up being a focused more towards young audiences than everyone was expecting. Check out the trailer after the jump. Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Did you hear? A small film called Twilight is coming out this Friday. Despite my own feelings on the movie and subject matter, I knew when I went to Twilight’s Comic Con this year amidst the massive throng of screaming women that this film would be a huge success. When I saw the film this past Tuesday night, one could easily tell that the excitement for this film from the mom/teen demographic was approaching a fevered pitch.
According to Variety, Summit Entertainment’s new teen vampire flick, Twilight, has already sold out almost 2,000 showings, 600 of them midnight showings.  Other sites like Collider are also reporting that Twilight accounts for a [...]

Twilight doesn’t hit theaters until next Friday, and Summit Entertainment has already aquired the rights to the next three novels in Stephenie Meyer’s vampire romance series. According to THR, Twilight scribe Melissa Rosenberg has signed on to pen the next two screenplays, based on the books New Moon (you can read the first chapter here) and Eclipse. A writer has not been hired to adapt the fourth book, Breaking Dawn.
The films themselves have yet to be officially greenlit, but I’m sure after the first film does monster business next week, it will only be a matter of time. Word is that Summit would like to shoot the next two films [...]

Summit Entertainment premiered new footage from Twilight during Monday night’s Heroes. In related news, the autograph signing in San Francisco actually happened as scheduled, despite the mini riot that occurred earlier in the day.

Last week, I received a phone call from my local Summit Entertainment publicity rep, informing me that the stars of Twilight were going on the road for an autograph tour to publicize the release of the film adaptation next week. I posted about the appearances here. Before I got off the phone I warned my local rep, “You understand this is going to get out of control right?”
You see, Twilight star Robert Pattinson was going to appear at a small Hot Topic store in the Stonestown Galleria, a mall just miles south of downtown San Francisco (but still technically in the city limits). I explained to my nice local publicist [...]

Hard to believe that a Kirk Cameron ichthys affair and Disaster Movie will ultimately out gross Sex Drive. After this weekend’s $3 million take, the /Film championed comedy is destined to join the “funny is funny” cult ranks of PCU and Grandma’s Boy. In a smart move, Summit Entertainment, soon to be fat off Twilight, isn’t letting writer/director Sean Anders and co-writer John Morris get away. They’ve signed the duo for an untitled second film, and the premise dances upon a rainbow…
The untitled project concerns a slacker college student who has a child with a one-night stand and is then forced to care for the baby after the mother is [...]

The first trailer for Summit’s sci-fi thriller Push is now online. Footage for the film premiered at Comic Con in July, and was mocked by most everyone in attendance. The concept seemed kinda cool (if not a Heroes/X-Men rip-off) but the low budget effects left many people in laughter (ie “the big scream”).
There are special people in this world that have been born with psychic powers. In 1945, government agencies set up for psychic warfare, trying to turn those people with abilities into soldiers. After the war, governments began to set up divisions with agents trained to hunt them down like animals, test and categorize them. There are a bunch [...]

We’ve tried to convince you that this weekend’s Sex Drive conquers the odds for that ever commodified of genres, the teen sex comedy. And now Summit Entertainment has released the first R-rated 10 minutes online to convert the masses. This should give you a good idea of how the film balances funny rapid-fire sophomoric humor with cast chemistry reminiscent of so many ’80s mallrat gems. While the movie’s resident mack, Clark Duke, doesn’t show up until the end, the brotherly crossfire between Josh Zuckerman and James Marsden hasn’t lost any punch since our press screening exploded. And Zuckerman’s Mexican donut now seems like a big Halloween Don’t (Do?) for the [...]

The final trailer for Twilight has leaked onto YouTube. I’ve pretty much given up all hope on this film, but I’m sure there are a few teenage girl readers who might be interested. As always, tell me what you think in the comments below!

Official Plot Synopsis: TWILIGHT is an action-packed, modern day love story between a vampire and a human. Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) has always been a little bit different, never caring about fitting in with the trendy girls at her Phoenix high school. When her mother remarries and sends Bella to live with her father in the rainy little town of Forks, Washington, she doesn’t expect much of [...]

“Guess the only Iraq War film to hit it big” is a game show that never ends, and the current front runner is The Hurt Locker from director Kathryn Bigelow. Jeff Wells has a pretty cool leaked one-sheet for the wartime thriller, opening 2009, and he compares the movie—which has been widely praised at festivals like TIFF for its intense action sequences and dutiful hard knock vibe—to James Cameron’s Aliens.
As hinted at by the poster’s dirty bomb and tagline, the plot follows one of the army’s Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) units as it “plays a dangerous game of cat and mouse in the chaos of war in a city where [...]

Three things you should know about Sex Drive: 1) A whore nearly shits on Clark Duke. 2) It’s one of the funniest movies of 2008. 3) It doesn’t carry a Judd Apatow hall-pass.
And if the word of mouth explodes on this flick, it might be hailed commercially as the new American Pie (whatever that means) right in time for total economic collapse. Admittedly, like your own, my expectations were really low for this movie, comparable to those for Nick & Norah: Die, and that was before I found out Fall Out Boy had a cameo. That was before I paid enough attention to realize the title was a pun. That [...]

The underlying message in this enticing teaser trailer for The Baader Meinhof Complex seems to be that young idealists who cross the chasm into full-blown terrorism are undeniably sexy. So, rest assured that many German critics feel the film doesn’t glorify sexy terrorism. Moreover, they have selected the movie for Best Foreign Film consideration in this year’s Oscar race.
In what is being reported as a comeback of sorts for German director, Uli Edel (the grim Christiane F., Madonna’s Body of Evidence), his feature film explores the early years of the region’s Red Army Faction, a group of young, far-Left protesters turned “guerillas” who wore sunglasses and organized bombings, bank robberies [...]