Eclipse, by far the best book of the four-part series, will be directed by Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona. Who the f**k is Bayona, you ask? Well, he directed the shockingly scary horror picture The Orphanage and is set to helm Hater for Universal Pictures. Bayona is, apparently, a protege of Guillermo Del Toro, who as everyone knows is directing the upcoming Hobbit films.

This is good news for the series. Catherine Hardwicke is a good director, but was the wrong choice for a vampire love story (that being said, Twilight still looked pretty damn good). Chris Weitz, who is doing New Moon, directed The Golden Compass, and while that one wasn’t as bad as critics made it out to be, it didn’t exactly prove his fantasy credentials. His work on About a Boy may come more in handy, however, since New Moon has very little real action.

Eclipse, thankfully, ends with a bang (so much so that I believe the series should have just stopped right there), and with The Orphanage Bayona has proven he can handle tense situations. Action scenes, I’m not so sure. But suspense, yes.

Melissa Rosenberg, who has written the screenplays for the last two Twilight films, is working on the third script. It is expected that Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner will reprise their roles of Edward, Bella and Jacob, respectively.

It will be interesting to see how this accelerated release schedule will play out for Summit. The Stephenie Meyer book series isn’t exactly made to make great movies, and I wonder if Summit realizes this. Furthermore, they may also be worried that the core audience will outgrow the story if they wait two years between each movie.

On the flip side, though, the amount of build up Summit can achieve leading up to each new Twilight picture will be subdued; by the time Eclipse rolls around, it won’t be much of an event considering that New Moon just left theaters a few months earlier.

Peter Facinelli (Carlisle Cullen in the movie) told MTV that there’s nothing wrong with the current film, but that executives were so delighted with the wrapped film that they opted to make some more of it; in other words, make the film everybody is waiting for.  “They liked it so much, they are bringing us back for some encore time to beef it up. Add a little salt and pepper.”

That’s ominous, in my opinion. If the executives liked it so much, why add more to it? It’s not completely ridiculous – perhaps the movie is so good that the executives approved additional budget to film scenes that were originally cut – but highly unlikely. And when I hear quotes like the one provided above, it sounds like major PR spin bullshit.

Here’s some more from Facinelli:

“I wouldn’t be walking tomorrow if I spilled those beans, but I’m psyched, especially about the wardrobe. I can tell you that it’s a flashback scene. It gives us a little bit of history of the Cullen family. They are just shooting a couple of different added scenes, and the scene I’m in, I can tell you it’s me and Robert Pattinson. Rosalie and Emmett are in that scene.”

And from Taylor Lautner (Jacob Black in the film): “I am going to be in the prom scene now, at the very end of the film. At first we didn’t film that, and now some people are saying they want to see a bit more of Jacob, and they want him in the prom scene at the end.”