The Twilight Saga Returns To Theaters Ahead Of Netflix’s Midnight Sun

For a limited time, Stephanie Meyer’s cultural phenomenon The Twilight Saga will return to theaters for the 20^th anniversary of the series. For the first time since Breaking Dawn: Part 2’s run in 2012, all five Twilight films will be available for fans to enjoy on the big screen. While longtime fans of the series will be ecstatic to hear they can relive the magic of seeing Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, fall madly in love with Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson, the immortal vampire who glistens in sunlight instead of turning to ash like the dreaded Dracula and Nosferatu of vampire fame.

LOS ANGELES, CA – OCTOBER 12: Writer Stephenie Meyer celebrates the tenth anniversary of “Twilight” with a special Q&A at Barnes & Noble at The Grove on October 12, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Amanda Edwards/WireImage)

WireImage

A Unique Opportunity

While the series has been debated amongst diehard fans of the series and naysayers that dislike the romanticism steeped within the series and the new takes on vampirism that Meyer had introduced, no one can deny that Meyer created a cultural cornerstone, as the film’s theatrical runs serve as a precursor to yet another moment in the series.

Based on the companion novel of the same name, Netflix’s upcoming animated adaptation of Midnight Sun, which tells the story of the first book from Edward’s perspective instead of Bella’s, is set to be released as a straight-to-series order. With an entirely new audience in Gen Z and the proven success of Netflix’s recent animated venture in K-Pop: Demon Hunters, now is the perfect time to reintroduce Twilight into the cultural mainstream; this time without unnecessary hate and eye rolls, but with affection and without fear of being ridiculed for liking something popular and geared toward women.

Netflix’s Midnight Sun Adaptation

The Midnight Sun novel was in development for years before being released in 2020. While the original Twilight novel focuses on Bella uncovering the mystery behind her attraction to Edward and his initial aversion to her, Midnight Sun offers a deeper look into Edward’s psyche and the overall mythology of Meyer’s vampires. Even from the early chapters, the whole picture and violence of vampirism are on display in Edward’s mind and memories, where there’s no need to solve the “mystery” of Edward being a vampire, because Meyer writes with the understanding that most of her audience already knows about it from reading, watching the movies, or cultural osmosis from the popularity of The Twilight Saga.

With the films returning to theaters, excitement and interest in the franchise will be reignited, and Netflix will benefit from the films attracting new viewers because that will showcase the IP’s strength, repositioning it as active and growing rather than as a relic of the past that has lost its cultural relevance.

By turning that into an animated series on Netflix, which has already demonstrated the power of the binge-watching model, this kind of renewed interest isn’t unique to the Twilight Saga. For example, other franchises have released their past projects before launching new entries in their respective universes. Disney did this in 2022 by rereleasing Avatar in theaters shortly before the release of its sequel, The Way of Water, since the first film originally came out in 2009. This nearly ritualistic practice allows audiences to reconnect with cultural giants that thrive on nostalgia.

Twilight and New Beginnings

Between the theatrical re-run of the original films and the animated Midnight Sun series currently in production at Netflix, The Twilight Saga is being propped up for a cultural resurgence, and with social media allowing for the nurturing of fandom in ways that were shunned or ridiculed in the 2000s and early 2010s, Netflix is in a unique position to give new and old fans a new chapter in Stephanie Meyer’s romantic blood-soaked vision.

I read Twilight when I was a teenager, before they were even turned into movies. I always felt like Meyer was sitting on a real goldmine with the mythology and characters of her series. Now, with the series possibly making a comeback, who’s to say that giants like Netflix won’t take the chance to tap into the rich world she created and turn the series into an even bigger franchise than it was before, if being bigger than Twilight was at its peak is even possible for any series.