Paramount sees the twilight, too late

Published on Saturday 22 November 2008 18:37

BUFFY the vampire slayer has a new rival. A low-budget horror film, rejected by major Hollywood studios, is set to become the box-office blockbuster of the winter.

Twilight, based on the first of American writer Stephenie Meyer's hugely popular teenage vampire novels, premieres in London on December 3 and is expected to propel virtually-unknown British actor Robert Pattinson, to cult status.

Ticket sales for the movie's opening weekend in the US are expected to approach $60m (40m), box office analysts said, driven by Meyer's devoted fans and marketing pyrotechnics by Summit Entertainment. Not bad for a film that cost just $37m to produce.

Thanks to classic Hollywood bungling, the fledgling company, normally ignored by major studios and agents, finds itself sitting atop one of the biggest pop-culture phenomena of recent years.

When Twilight opened in the US on Friday, audiences were greeted by Summit's logo: an abstract squiggle evoking a mountain ridge and not the more realistic mountain peak of Paramount Pictures, the studio that, at one time, controlled the rights to Twilight. Someone at the studio decided, in 2006, that the series was a dud. The current game at Paramount is to find out who deserves the blame.

The release of the film of the best-selling fantasy romance novel will provide new impetus to the biggest publishing phenomenon since Harry Potter. The initial print run of Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in Meyer's series, was 3.2 million copies – close to the 3.8 million US run for the fourth Harry Potter book. The high expectations for the film have been bolstered by its soundtrack becoming the biggest-selling album in the US, even before the first screening.

Previously, Summit was best known for obscurities such as P2, a horror film set in a car park, and Sex Drive about a loser who works in a doughnut shop.

Tara S Kole, a partner at the entertainment law firm Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown, which represents clients like Steven Spielberg and Mary-Kate Olsen, said: "Summit has obviously played this very smart in the marketing, but the smartest decision was noticing the property in the first place."

Summit Entertainment was, for years, an overseas seller of movies that also dabbled in production, putting money into films like Michael Clayton and Mr & Mrs Smith, made by more experienced studios. But after attracting $1bn worth of investment, Summit recast itself as a fully-fledged studio in April 2006. Led by Robert G Friedman, formerly vice-chairman of Paramount, and Patrick Wachsberger, a veteran international sales agent, it now intends to produce and distribute as many as 12 pictures a year.

When Paramount rejected Twilight, Friedman heard about it. Erik Feig, Summit's production chief, did some research and noticed an intense following online even though the book had not yet reached stratospheric status. Summit pounced, seeing a potential franchise.

"We saw a great Romeo and Juliet story that has a very interesting modern sensibility," Friedman said.

At last Monday's US premiere in Los Angeles, about 3,000 fans lined the streets around the two cinemas screening the film and more than 1,000 people were denied entry to the packed premiere party.

Wachsberger is delighted. "With Twilight, we've proved that we can market a movie as well as any other studio," he said.