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 Kristen Stewart (as Bella) and Robert Pattinson (as Edward ) in The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which hits stores on DVD and Blu-Ray on Saturday at 12:01 a.m. local time. |
Do you know where your kids will be Thursday night? Home in bed, we hope. Thursday is a school night in jurisdictions that did not celebrate March Break this week.
But Friday is another story. Across Canada — indeed, across North America — teens could be pajama-partying for the evening at their local video store and lining up at midnight to buy The Twilight Saga: New Moon.
The Twilight sequel debuts on DVD and Blu-ray at precisely 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning. Expect millions who lionize Twilight to turn New Moon into one of the biggest home-entertainment events of the year. They are Twihards, true believers who don’t care what cynical critics say about their beloved movies.
New Moon is already a mega-hit in theatres, as The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is expected to become after it opens in theatres June 30. New Moon generated a staggering $707 million in box office worldwide, $296.5 million of that in Canada and the U.S., according to Box Office Mojo.
“We have the best fans in the world, fans that will stay out at midnight for a DVD release, fans that go see the movie 3, 4 or 11 times in some cases,” says Edi Gathegi, who plays rogue vampire Laurent.
Gathegi is one of the many major faces who show up repeatedly in a new fan-friendly documentary on both the DVD and the Blu-ray on New Moon. Running 65 minutes and delivered in crisp high-definition on the Blu-ray, the doc takes viewers behind the scenes for the launch of the movies and on the set of New Moon.
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Canadian vampire Rachelle Lefevre calls it “vampire camp,” while Kristin Stewart calls the experience of returning to the Twilight world “strangely nostalgic.” Heartthrob Robert Pattinson says that “in the Twilight bubble” he doesn’t have to worry.
The intensity over the franchise is palpable, yet shocking.
“When we were filming Twilight,” Taylor Lautner says in the doc, “none of us had any idea how big it was going to be.”
Canadian Cameron Bright has some notions about what has happened. Bright is known for his kid role with Nicole Kidman in Birth and later teen roles in X-Men: The Last Stand and two high-end Jason Reitman films, Thank You for Smoking and Juno. In New Moon, he plays Alec, one member of the vampire royalty known as the Volturi. It is a small role that gets bigger in Eclipse and even bigger in Breaking Dawn, the fourth movie that has yet to be filmed.
On the telephone from home in Victoria, B.C., where he was born, the 17-year-old Bright ponders the big “why” question about the Twilight phenomenon.
“I really don’t know, to be honest with you,” Bright says with a laugh. “It is just one of those things. But I’ve heard that people can relate to it. All this is really about is just growing up. That’s what it’s about. It just adds the whole vampire story. Kristen’s Bella is growing up. She is realizing what love is, what it is like to lose friends, and all that kind of stuff. There is the long-lost love and then the love triangle. Everybody can relate to it.”
Ditto for the heartbreak, the longing and the melancholy that often paralyzes New Moon and slows the movie to a crawl. “It was a little slow,” Bright admits. “But the third one? I’m going to like the third one, I can tell you that. And the fourth one, that’s the biggie (for the Volturi), so that’s the one that I’m waiting for.”
But the same themes of growing up will be in play throughout, Bright says. He thinks that is why the actors gets mobbed at Twilight conventions.
“Everybody has felt those things. Moms say: ‘It reminds me of when I was a kid!’ And all the kids say: ‘It reminds me of what I’m going through right now!’ ”