How do you condense an 800-page book into a two hour movie?
MR: “Very carefully. You start with, and you end with, what is the emotional journey for these characters. That is the most important thing to capture, that is the only thing to capture. Everything else is up for grabs, but you must take these characters on the same emotional journey that they took in the book, and hence take the audience on the same emotional journey that they took in the book and that’s the goal, you hope that you achieve that. some people would say I did, some people would say I don’t.”
Do you get any feedback from the fans when you, for example.. cut certain scenes?
MR: “I have a fan site, and the fans will weigh in and say wow! you’ve cut too many things out.. or say I’ve done a fantastic job. They are very kind on my site, there are other sites I know that I don’t read, because I can’t handle that kind of intensity. You can’t make all the fans happy, you try to make as many as possible happy.”
MR: “It’s the big one, it’s gonna be a big challenge, and I guarantee you that not all of the fans will be happy, and I guarantee you some of them will be.
You have to give up the ideal of making everybody happy, it’s just not gonna happen, but you hope you make the majority happy. Again, for that last book it is about taking that specific character Bella on her journey. It’s a big journey, it’s a massive change for her, and you hope to realize that.”
Going back to ’Breaking Dawn’, how far along are you in the planning, with production coming up pretty soon?
MR: “It’s coming up very soon, it’s all deep into the discussions and working on the story, and figuring out what it’s gonna be… we’re deep in the middle of it.”
Any word on when it will “officially” be green-lit?
MR: “I don’t know, but obviously soon.. vampires aren’t supposed to age, so you know.”
So what now MR, 1 or 2 movies? Breaking Dawn will never work with just one 2-hour movie. It will look contrite among other things.
