Summit hits its peak with 'Twilight'

"Karen was really passionate about the project, and so was Erik," Friedman recalls. "The whole premise -- a 'Romeo and Juliet' story set in the vampire world -- felt like a movie. So we went to Stephenie to get the rights. She had some trepidation, not being especially excited after her first studio experience, so we really made an effort to make her comfortable with our approach."

Summit brought in a new writer, Melissa Rosenberg, to write an adaptation, which in turn attracted the interest of Hardwicke. Friedman said Summit took great pains to keep Meyer involved, as Warner Bros. has done with "Harry Potter" creator J.K. Rowling. "We've worked with her in lock step from Day One," he says. "We recognized early on that she was a tremendous asset and had a strong voice with her fan base. The fans are your first audience, so you want them to be happy. We've involved Stephenie in everything, from the script to casting to production. We see her as our partner."

"Twilight" has a kinship with "Harry Potter," from its star (Pattinson was Cedric Diggory in the "Potter" films) all the way through to its release date. The film had been scheduled for release Dec. 12, but when Warners pushed back "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" to July, Summit moved "Twilight" on to its date, giving it access to more theaters than it would have had in December. Friedman is coy about how quickly Summit will move ahead with a sequel, saying he'll worry about that the day after "Twilight" opens in theaters. But Summit already has the rights to the rest of the series and has "Twilight's" lead actors under contract for sequels as well. News leaked out Friday that Summit has already commissioned scripts for the next two books from Rosenberg.

Paramount's loss is Summit's potential windfall. It's not exactly a news flash that studios miss the boat on valuable properties -- Warner Bros. famously gave away "Home Alone," which went on to become a fabulously successful franchise at 20th Century Fox. The "Twilight" blunder simply underscores how badly Paramount mismanaged its MTV brand. By refusing to give MTV Films any true autonomy (the same approach it took with its failed Paramount Classics specialty division), the studio blew an opportunity to extend the valuable youth-culture clout of its MTV network into film production. The irony of all ironies is that the beneficiary of Paramount's "Twilight" fumble is Friedman, who was one of the top Paramount execs who kept MTV Films and Paramount Classics on such a tight leash.

But give Friedman credit. He's cannily adapting to his new surroundings, far more willing today to embrace fresh ideas than he was at Paramount. He's sort of the Hollywood equivalent of T. Boone Pickens, the oil tycoon suddenly turned alternative energy booster. For now, Friedman is busy trying to keep expectations from spinning out of control. It's not often that one of the new kids on the block lands a gigantic potential franchise, but Friedman plans to take full advantage of their good fortune. "It's the great thing about Hollywood," he says. "Sometimes things happen when they're supposed to happen. It was just the right moment in time for us."

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patrick.goldstein @latimes.com

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