The international fandom that created crazed fans, screeching fan girls, and vampire obsession all started with a dream. On June 2, 2003, Stephenie Meyer’s world changed forever. Stephenie seemed unable to shake the dream- and the characters- from her mind. She sat down to write, something that she had not attempted in a very long time.
As the Microsoft Word pages climbed and more words filled the pages, Meyer cranked out her first novel within three months. After some encouragement from her sister, Meyer sent the novel to a number of different publishing companies that had the same response: rejection. Eventually, through many rejection letters later, Writer’s House picked the novel and eventually Twilight made its way to Little Brown Publishing Company.
Only weeks after its debut in 2005, Twilight stole the #5 spot on the New York Times Bestseller, along with earning the most talked about novel, named Amazon’s “Best Book of the Decade…So Far”, ALA’s Top Ten Books for Young Adults AND grabbed Publisher’s Weekly title of Best Book of the Year. Soon, the stay at home mother became a household name as New Moon (released in 2006) spent more than 25 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list as number one.
The third installment in the saga, Eclipse (which hit stores in 2007) only allowed the popularity of the novels to increase. Breaking Dawn (the fourth and final book in the Twilight Series) was published in 2008. Stephenie Meyer became more notorious as she climbed up the starlit social ladder as she appeared on many talk shows and magazine covers. Just in the first twenty-four hours of being on the shelves alone, Breaking Dawn sold 1.3 million copies.
Summit Entertainment claimed rights to film production and in 2008 Twilight the movie (starring Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen) hit the big screen. In midnight screenings alone, the movie grossed $7 million dollars. In total, Twilight earned $392 million worldwide. In late 2009, New Moon was released as a motion picture, much to the squealing fan girls’ delight. The sequel earned $72.7 million dollars on opening day.
The summer of 2010 brought the third installment, Eclipse, to theaters. For the midnight showings, Eclipse grossed a whopping $30 million. Only six days after its release, the movie raked in $176.4 million, which was only surpassed by Breaking Dawn Part 1, which earned a total of $702 million within the first few weeks. Breaking Dawn Part 2, the highly anticipated movie of the year, is set to be released on November 16 2012.
