Stephenie Meyer hardly is the first modern author to have a novel successfully transition to the big screen, but she’s certainly among the most notable.
The Twilight author, whose next adaptation, The Host, is due out in March, created a phenomenon with her first book series, selling about 1.6 million print and 778,000 e-book copies of The Twilight Saga in 2012 alone. The fifth and final film in the series, Breaking Dawn – Part 2, opened to a whopping $340.9 million globally this past weekend.
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But what is it about Meyer’s writing that makes her a Hollywood success story?
Says Kristen Stewart, who embodies Meyer’s heroine Bella Swan: “We’d just be creating phenomenons every day if we had the equation for it. I do find that the reason it’s really sparked and caught and really spread is because it’s such a vivacious experience. It’s rare.”
Adds Robert Pattinson, the actor behind lovable vampire Edward Cullen: “She’s very personal in her writing to the point where it almost feels too personal. She wasn’t thinking about publishing anything when she was writing; it was based on a dream and she was kind of compelled to write it.”
Meyer released her first non-Twilight novel, The Host, in 2008 and serves as a producer on the film adaptation directed by Andrew Niccol. Like Twilight, The Host is set in the realm of sci-fi centering on a young, female protagonist caught in the midst of a pseudo-love triangle. In the tale, the human race has been taken over by an alien species called Souls, which take over the mind and body of their human hosts. Saoirse Ronan plays Melanie Stryder, a character who refuses to allow a Soul to fully control her thoughts.
“It’s the duality, I think,” says Jackson Rathbone (Jasper Hale) of Meyer’s success. “Within The Host, she has this character that’s of two minds, and throughout the entire Twilight Saga, you’ve got a girl that’s in love with two guys. It’s interesting, that duality in human nature, light and dark, fear and love, love and hate. It’s something that we’re all faced with every day.”
For more from the actors, including Kellan Lutz, Taylor Lautner, Elizabeth Reaser and Michael Sheen, watch the video above.
Email: Sophie.Schillaci@thr.com; Twitter: @SophieSchillaci
