Movie Alert: 'Twilight'

This article originally appeared in PW's Children's Bookshelf. Sign up now!

-- Publishers Weekly, 10/23/2008

The last few months for Stephenie Meyer have been marked by some very big numbers: Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book in her Twilight Saga, had a 3.2 million-copy first printing and sold 1.3 million copies on its August 2 pub date. Now in its third printing, Breaking Dawn currently has 4.2 million copies in print, with 2.7 million copies sold. To date, the Twilight Saga has sold more than 13 million copies in the U.S.

And more major numbers may be in store—in terms of both book and ticket sales—with the November 21 premiere of the film adaptation of Twilight, the first book in the series. The Summit Entertainment film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown), stars Kristen Stewart as Bella and Robert Pattinson as Edward. It was originally slotted to open on December 12, but was moved up when the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was pushed back to July 2009.

Little, Brown has a full slate of tie-ins arriving in the coming weeks, including trade and mass market paperback editions of Twilight (with 500,000 and 1.5 million-copy first printings, respectively), as well as Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion by Mark Cotta Vaz (300,000 copies), a behind-the-scenes look at the film with color photos, storyboards, interviews and more. Also in the works is Meyer’s The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide (500,000 copies), an encyclopedic guide to her four-book series, which will include character profiles, genealogical charts and maps; a pub date has not yet been finalized.