Deadline reports Netflix has given a straight-to-series order for a Twilight animated series based on Stephenie Meyer’s 2020 novel Midnight Sun. Just like the book it’s based on, the new series plans to retell the events of Meyer’s original novel from the perspective of the 100-year old vampire, Edward Cullen, instead of teenager Bella Swan. Sinead Daly (Tell Me Lies) has been hired to executive produce and write the series for the streamer and Lionsgate Television.
Selling over a million copies in its first week of publication, Midnight Sun was largely panned by critics upon release for its massive 750+ page length and Edward’s odd prose. As the outlet notes, Meyers shared chapters from a much earlier draft of her novel with actor Robert Pattinson during the filming of the original Twilight to better inform his performance.
For anyone who found Edward’s character and motivations impenetrable before, it’s a fascinating, yet still often unhelpful read. Written in the first person, Edward describes how his intrusive, vampiric instincts cause him to lose control with flowery, inappropriate-for-the-moment language. It’s sort of like an 800-page version of that joke in Ghostbusters where Egon states “he’s terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.” For fans, there’s certainly enough material for an entire season of television. For an accurate adaptation of the novel, the story will have to be told in glacial increments, like those Dragonball Z arcs where characters spend multiple episodes merely steeling themselves before they do anything to Frieza.
Unfortunately, that’s all we know about the project so far—we don’t know how it will be animated, or in what style we’ll see Alice, Jacob, Jasper, and the rest of the characters rendered. Traditional 2D, anime-inspired, CG, cel-shaded, stop-motion? At this point, your guess is as good as ours.
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