Summit Entertainment announced Sunday that Catherine Hardwicke, the “Twilight” director, will not be involved in the already anticipated sequel, “New Moon.”

“Summit’s targeted end of 2009 or early 2010 release of the film, New Moon, does not work with Ms. Hardwicke’s required prep time to bring her vision of the film to the big screen,” Summit and Hardwicke said in a joint statement. “Thus as has been done before with many successful film franchises, the studio will employ a new director for ‘New Moon.'”

“I am sorry that due to timing I will not have the opportunity to direct ‘New Moon,'” said Hardwicke. “Directing ‘Twilight’ has been one of the great experiences of my life, and I am grateful to the fans for their passionate support of the film.”

We’re not sure exactly why Hardwicke is out for the cash machine that is Twilight and its coming sequels.

“Catherine did an incredible job in helping us to launch the Twilight franchise and we thank her for all of her efforts and we very much hope to work with her on future Summit projects,” said Erik Feig, Summit’s President of Production. “We as a studio have a mandate to bring the next installment in the franchise to the big screen in a timely fashion so that fans can get more of Edward, Bella and all of the characters that Stephenie Meyer has created. We are able to pursue an aggressive time frame as we have the luxury of only adapting the novels into screenplays as opposed to having to create a storyline from scratch.”

About The Author

John Guilfoil is the editor-in-chief of Blast: Boston's Online Magazine and the Blast Magazine Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Tweet @johnguilfoil.

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