Why 'Twilight' is Historic for Women Filmmakers
Filed under: Box Office, Fandom, Newsstand
It's being mentioned in a few of the box office reports showing up online, but we here at Cinematical felt it deserved its own post. In case you haven't noticed, Twilight's $70.5 million amounts to the best opening weekend for a female director ever. Not only did she break Mimi Leder's (Deep Impact) record of $41.1 million, but Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke destroyed it -- bringing her all the way up to the 29th best opening weekend in history (according to Box Office Mojo), slightly beating -- wait for it -- Michael Bay's Transformers by roughly $50 thousand on 600 less screens. I think this proved giant f**king robots are no match for millions of screaming girls.
But this isn't the only record Catherine Hardwicke could break. Our friends over at Over Thinking It pointed out that should Twilight gross more than $187 million domestic, the film will crack the top 100 grossing movies of all time (domestic) list. And if that happens, Hardwicke will become the first female live action American director to crack the holy top 100. I'm sure there's a bunch of other weird little records in there, but I failed math back in the day and I'm probably not the guy you want adding things up.
While this is a great achievement for Hardwicke and women filmmakers, however, there's this quote from a recent study conducted by Dr. Martha Lauzen of San Diego State University (via OTI): "Women accounted for 6% of directors in 2007, a decline of one percentage point since 2006. This figure is almost half the percentage of women directors working in 2000 when women accounted for 11% of all directors." Not good. Hopefully Hardwicke's fantastic opening will help open some eyes ...
Check out our interview with Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke over here.
Twilight' Photos
EXCLUSIVE: Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen
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EXCLUSIVE: Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen
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The cast of 'Twilight'
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Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen
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Cam Gigandet as James, Edi Gathegi as Laurent and Rachelle Lefevre as Victoria
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Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen
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Nikki Reed as Rosalie Hale
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Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen and Cam Gigandet as James
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Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen
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Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen
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Ron Weaseley Has Swine Flu
Quick List: Romance for Boys
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Michael Bay Trashes Megan Fox, Talks 'Transformers 3' and 3D_thumbnail.jpg)
First Look: Stewart, Fanning and More Are 'The Runaways'
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
11-24-2008 @ 10:41AM
drew said...
Twilight beat Transformers by 50 million!? I'm pretty sure Tranformers made more than 20mil its first weekend.
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11-24-2008 @ 10:45AM
techstar25 said...
It beat Transformers by $50,000, as in fifty thousand, not fifty million as you reported.
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11-24-2008 @ 10:46AM
Erik Davis said...
Yes, thank you. We got it. It's changed. Chalk it up to a Monday morning error ...
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11-24-2008 @ 11:08AM
Bill said...
While any sucking in Twilight was intentional due to it's subject matter, Transformers just sucked. (Bwahaha. It's funny because it's true.)
I plan to see Twilight before Thanksgiving. It looks like a good film to me. And yes, it is good to see a female director succeed. I would have thought that after Penny Marshall and Katherine Bigalow they would be more common by now. I would like to see Tina Fey direct something. She is so talented at comedy writing I bet she would do well.
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11-24-2008 @ 11:54AM
Shaun said...
Now don't get me wrong, Transformers was complete garbage, but one key fact that you guys are missing is that Transformers opened on a Tuesday!!
It had already grossed ~$85 million by Thursday night! And grossed an additional 70 million on days 4-6 of it's release (the time period that you are comparing....)
Perhaps you should do an "apples-to-apples" comparison before you say that this "proves" anything.
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11-24-2008 @ 12:04PM
drew said...
I think its great that a woman director is getting noticed. I'm curious though what anyone thinks about this, how relevant is it that she is a woman? I don't think any of the teen girls that lined up for this movie did so because it was directed by a woman. Also, she had a ready-made audience with this movie, it could have been a total lemon and it would have done well. If she opens up doors for other women directors great, but that sounds like the same logic some studio heads had after Dark Knight did well, the 'lets make every super hero story dark' mentality.
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11-24-2008 @ 4:06PM
Harry Medved said...
it is relevant that "Twilight" was directed by a woman - the story is told from a young woman's point-of-view and has a distinct female sensibility - and a male director probably would have messed up the girls' romantic fantasy by casting a different (read: "hotter") actress as "Bella."
11-25-2008 @ 3:55PM
Dan said...
Thank you drew! i couldn't have said it better! Truth to be told Cathrine Hardwicke has very little to do with this film's success (I bet even she knows this). It's the massive fanbase that made the movie become a blockbuster! Carthrine hardwicke was just extremely lucky to have been a part of an easy ride. In fact this applies to everything that has anything to do with twilight. No matter what studio, director, production crew, cast, etc were involved, the movie would still be huge. And the fans didn't go to see it becuase it's a great movie. They did because it it what it is - twilight!
11-25-2008 @ 2:53AM
Toni said...
Call me picky, but I would have preferred if a stride such as this was made because of an original, quality, cinematic work, rather than an adaptation of a sub-par young-adult novel.
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11-25-2008 @ 5:48AM
rekres said...
Twilight's success has less to do with a female director and then hoards of mindless teenie girls who would go to see this movie no matter WHO made it...
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11-25-2008 @ 7:55AM
Darkmire said...
Screaming teenage girls are the anti-thesis of everything grown women filmmakers stand for.
So, no. This was a victory for superficial teenagers who know nothing about anything.
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11-26-2008 @ 10:37AM
Libby said...
Look...there are a couple posters now who say it's all "screaming teen girls"....but I'mm 33, have never read the books, and still went to see this movie and liked it. Now I will read the books, but it's a facination with vampires that drew me, nothing else.
11-25-2008 @ 9:12AM
Anne said...
As far as I'm concerned, the breakthrough was Kimberly Peirce directing the excellent "Boys Don't Cry," which was one of the best films I've seen in the past 15 years. Who cares who directs the schlocky moneymakers?
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11-25-2008 @ 9:15AM
LRogan said...
First of all, yes, the success of Twilight has more to do with pre-set audiences of avid teenagers (true, most but not all are girls), in the same way that Harry Potter was sure-fire hit. But as far as Hardwicke being some pioneer, I don't think we should start passing out the Susan B. Anthony Award yet. First of all, as far as box office goes, there's one thing being totally neglected (and is ALWAYS neglected in box office discussions) and that is inflation. Sure, Mimi Leder's Deep Impact made $41 million in its first weekend - but that was TEN years ago in 1998! Also, the highest grossing film directed by a woman (not counting for inflation-according to IMDB) is What Women Want from Nancy Meyers in 2000. It grossed $182.8 million in 2000. (And that may have more to do with Gibson and Hunt than Meyers, too.) And come on, Kathryn Bigelow was dealing with vampires with guns back in 1987 in Near Dark. True, if we don't count for inflation, Twilight will more than likely surpass that, but this whole argument about Hardwicke being some pioneer is a bit premature. The success of Twilight the movie is more about the woman Meyer than Hardwicke. If you truly want to see a woman filmmaker's unique vision on screen, watch The Piano.
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11-25-2008 @ 10:14AM
sjb121590 said...
Uhm... the Twilight movie was horrible and the directing made my eyes bleed. I am pretty sure women don't want to be known for this piece of crap film.
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11-25-2008 @ 10:44AM
Andriy Rebkov said...
Anne said:
As far as I'm concerned, the breakthrough was Kimberly Peirce directing the excellent "Boys Don't Cry," which was one of the best films I've seen in the past 15 years. Who cares who directs the schlocky moneymakers?
____
The original post was about the commercial breakthrough of female directors. Women have always made great films. Peirce's "Boys Don't Cry" is no breakthrough in that regard. And why should we care "who directs the schlocky moneymakers?" In this case, the director is Catherine Hardwicke. Her earlier film, Thirteen, was certainly a breakthrough. It was written by (then) fourteen year old, Nikki Reed.
Also, with regards to the title of this post, it should read "female filmmakers". Women is a noun, not an adjective.
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11-25-2008 @ 11:14AM
MMartyM said...
The whole idea of discussing a movies' success by how much money it made is nauseating. "Blow", a great movie made an excellent point... "Money isn't real, Georgie". Can you think of one person that watches movies somewhat regularly that hasn't seen at least three of Kevin Smith's films? They're growing, but none of his movies have really done well theatrically, and odds are the movies of his that people have seen are probably the ones that made the least theatrically, i.e; Mallrats. Yes, I do think it's relevant to acknowledge the success of female directors, but I'd rather it be directed more towards female directors with good/great films under their belts like Meyers and Bigelow.
I've never read the books, but what I'm told from both sides of the gender isle is they belong on supermarket bookshelves with Fabio draped on the cover. I was bullied into the midnight release by a group of female friends who had read and enjoyed the books. They had no idea what happened, like the popcorn movie goers who stumbled into "Southland Tales" because of the cast and walked out scratching there heads. Everyone needs to accept that "Twilight's" box office success was based solely on the book's fan base, and was an assured money maker, male or female director aside. If it weren't for that, this movie may not have even made it to Oxygen or Lifetime... it was that lame.
When Hardwicke directs a real movie, with little to no pre-existing audience or advertising, and it grass-roots it's way to box office success, then you should give her a post about doing something worth talking about.
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11-25-2008 @ 1:25PM
Demerson said...
Now, if this movie wasn't one of the worst movies ever made in the history of cinema, this may be an accomplishment, but sadly it is not.
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11-25-2008 @ 1:32PM
goldfarb said...
Twilight beat Deep Impact by only about 6 million...in adjusted dollars...
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11-25-2008 @ 3:24PM
V.M.L. said...
This news is becoming important for me. I'm a female student filmmaker. It has always been my dream to make movies, whether they're (non-cheesy) romance pictures or action movies. I often get scared about me and other female filmmakers losing opportunities to making films just because they're female. Yes, there is sexism in Hollywood and it doesn't always happen in front of the camera. That's why many female filmmakers get stuck with making corny chick flicks. Its usually because executives can't trust women with "man flicks." And don't say females are not good at directing those kind of movies--its mostly because they're never given the chance to!
I hope the door keeps opening.
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