Twilight (2008 film)

Twilight is a 2008 American vampire romance film based on Stephenie Meyer's popular novel of the same name. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. It is the first film in The Twilight Saga film series. This film focuses on the development of the relationship between Bella Swan (a teenage girl) and Edward Cullen (a vampire), and the subsequent efforts of Edward and his family to keep Bella safe from a coven of evil vampires.

The project was in development for approximately three years at Paramount Pictures, during which time a screen adaptation that differed significantly from the novel was written. Summit Entertainment acquired the rights to the novel after three years of the project's stagnant development. Melissa Rosenberg wrote a new adaptation of the novel shortly before the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike and sought to be faithful to the novel's storyline. Principal photography took 44 days and completed on May 2, 2008; the film was primarily shot in Oregon.

Robert Pattinson

Robert Douglas Thomas Pattinson (born 13 May 1986) is an English actor, model, musician and producer.

Pattinson started his film career by playing Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a 2005 fantasy film. He later got the leading role of vampire Edward Cullen in the film adaptations of the Twilight novels by Stephenie Meyer, which consisted of five films between 2008 and 2012 that combined grossed over $3.3 billion in worldwide receipts. Twilight brought Pattinson worldwide fame, and established him among the highest paid and most bankable actors in Hollywood. In 2010, Pattinson was named one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World, and also in the same year Forbes ranked him as one of the most powerful celebrities in the world in the Forbes Celebrity 100.

In 2009, he portrayed Salvador Dalí in Little Ashes. That same year, a documentary film, Robsessed, about the actor's fame and popularity, was released. He appeared as a troubled young man in Remember Me (2010) and also starred in a romantic drama, Water for Elephants (2011). His performance as a tough, cold-hearted and calculating billionaire in David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis (2012), earned him critical praise. He gained critical appreciation for his performances in David Michod's futuristic western The Rover (2014), in Cronenberg's satire drama Maps to the Stars (2014), in Werner Herzog's biopic film Queen of the Desert (2015) and in Anton Corbijn's Life (2015), a drama film about Life Magazine photographer Dennis Stock and James Dean. He will appear in James Gray's The Lost City of Z, about an explorer who disappeared in the Amazon while looking for an ancient city.

Kristen Stewart

Kristen Jaymes Stewart (born April 9, 1990) is an American actress, known for playing the protagonist Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga film series from 2008–12, which has grossed over $3.3 billion worldwide. She is the "face" of Chanel and Balenciaga fashion brands.

Stewart began her career in 1999 and came to prominence playing Jodie Foster's daughter in the 2002 thriller Panic Room. She has since starred in a range of films, including Speak (2004), Zathura (2005), Into The Wild (2007), Adventureland (2009), The Runaways (2010), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), On the Road (2012), Camp X-Ray (2014), Still Alice (2014) and Equals (2015).

Stewart was listed as the highest-earning female actress in the Vanity Fair "Hollywood Top Earners List of 2010", with an estimated earning of $28.5 million. In 2011, she was named number one on Forbes magazine's list of "Hollywood's Best Actors for the Buck".Forbes also named her as the highest paid actress in 2012, with total earnings of $34.5 million. She won the Rising Star BAFTA Award in 2010, and became the first American actress to win a Cesar Award, when she won Best Supporting Actress in 2015 for her role opposite Juliette Binoche in Clouds of Sils Maria (2014).

Twilight

Twilight is the illumination of the Earth's lower atmosphere when the Sun itself is not directly visible because it is below the horizon. Twilight is produced by sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere, illuminating the lower atmosphere so that the surface of the Earth is neither completely lit nor completely dark. The word "twilight" is also used to denote the periods of time when this illumination occurs.

The further the Sun is below the horizon, the dimmer the twilight (other things such as atmospheric conditions being equal). When the Sun reaches 18 degrees below the horizon, the twilight's brightness is nearly zero, and evening twilight becomes nighttime. When the Sun again reaches 18 degrees below the horizon, nighttime becomes morning twilight. Owing to its distinctive quality, primarily the absence of shadows and the appearance of objects silhouetted against the bright sky, twilight has long been popular with photographers, who refer to it as 'sweet light', and painters, who refer to it as the blue hour, after the French expression: l'heure bleue.

Edward Cullen

Edward Cullen (né Edward Anthony Masen) is a fictional character in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. He is featured in the books Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, and their corresponding film adaptations, and the as yet unfinished novel Midnight Sun—a re-telling of the events of Twilight from Edward's perspective. Edward is a telepathic vampire who, over the course of the series, falls in love with, marries, and has a child with Bella Swan, a human teenager who later chooses to become a vampire as well. In the Twilight film series, Edward is played by actor Robert Pattinson.

Concept and creation

Stephenie Meyer stated that the original concept of Edward originated in a dream that she had, in which an "average girl" and a "fantastically beautiful, sparkly ... vampire ... were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods." In this dream, the pair "were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that ... they were falling in love with each other while ... the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her." She chose the name "Edward" because she thought it was "a name that had once been considered romantic, but had fallen out of popularity for decades". The development of the character was influenced by the fictional characters Gilbert Blythe, Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Edward Rochester—particularly the last, who, like Edward Cullen, sees himself as a "monster". A recurring theme in the series, especially in the first three books, is that Edward is constantly trying to avoid accidentally harming Bella, due to his vampire nature.