Deadline NY reports that Oscar and Bram Stoker Award winning Bill Condon (for his Gods and Monsters screenplay) “has emerged as the number one choice to direct the final two installments.” The operative word here being “two” installments.
Deadline continues, “Shooting will begin in the fall, and I heard the plan is to shoot two films back to back. That was just what my colleague Nikki Finke reported. She also wrote that Summit was looking for a big director, and Dreamgirls and Gods and Monsters director Condon certainly fits that bill. Presumably, Condon would do this as his next project and push back the picture he had planned to direct. That’s an adaptation of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, which he was putting together to be distributed by Fox Searchlight…The Twilight job came open when The Twilight Saga: New Moon director Chris Weitz decided not to reprise, despite directing a film that grossed $707 million worldwide, almost doubling the Catherine Hardwicke-directed original’s $385 million worldwide gross.”
We’ll believe it when we hear it from Summit, but in the meantime it’s sounding pretty likely. Keep it here for more.