Lionsgate is expanding the “Twilight” franchise with a new animated series, Variety has confirmed.
Michael Burns, vice chairman of Lionsgate, shared the news during a Q&A at the Morgan Stanley media conference on Tuesday, revealing, “We’re going to go out with the ‘Twilight’ series, an animated series, I think there’ll be a lot of interest in that.”
Last April, Variety reported that a “Twilight” TV series adaptation was in very early development at Lionsgate Television.
The animated series would be based on the Stephanie Meyer book series of the same name, which was previously adapted into a film franchise, starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner.
There were four “Twilight” novels — “Twilight,” “New Moon,” “Eclipse” and “Breaking Dawn” — published between 2005 and 2008. In 2015, Meyer released the book “Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined,” which gender-swapped the two main characters, Bella and Edward. Meyer then released “Midnight Sun” in 2020, which told the story of the first book from Edward’s perspective rather than Bella’s.
The film franchise, collectively known as “The Twilight Saga,” was comprised of five films (the “Breaking Dawn” book was split into two) that were released between 2008 and 2012. The five “Twilight” films grossed over $3 billion at the global box office in total.
Burns also revealed that Lionsgate is expanding the “John Wick” franchise with a new series, saying, “I think we’ll take one of our great action franchises starring Keanu Reeves, I think it’ll be a television series.”
Reeves portrayed the titular gun-fu action hero in four films, released between 2014 and 2023. The upcoming “John Wick” show comes on the heels of the prequel miniseries “The Continental,” which premiered on Peacock in September 2023.
