If the spring seems a little hotter than usual, it’s probably because of the fever millions of fans are running now that “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” has finally gone before the cameras in Vancouver.
The flames were fanned by ET Online on Thursday releasing a teaser for the exclusive interviews and set footage they'll be screening on "Entertainment Tonight" April 23..
That the 30-second promo featured -- OMG! -- Robert Pattinson himself promising director Chris Weitz’s adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s second novel will “live up to the hype” no doubt made a lot of hungry hearts skip a beat.
That is, of course, primarily among members of “Team Edward."
Those “Twilight” fans who’d rather see Taylor Lautner’s character get Kristen Stewart’s Bella -- the massed ranks of “Team Jacob” -- were probably booing and hissing at their TV sets and cracking jokes about Pattinson’s on-set stinkiness, as was widely reported a few weeks back.
Now that filming’s under way, and the countdown well and truly on to the Nov. 20 release, expect every such appearance, utterance, set photo and news item to generate Talmudic-level scrutiny and unprecedented cyber-chatter.
In the physical world, expect to see a lot more T-shirts proclaiming “Team Jacob” or “Team Edward” on the street.
And don’t be surprised if some of the gals (and the occasional Twi-guy, as relatively rare male members of the species are known) are also wearing replica Bella bracelets (“On one side a Genuine Swarovski Crystal represents the beautiful cold and hard Edward. On the other side a ‘custom cast’ copper wolf charm represents the wild side of Jacob”) or even munching on Twilight Forbidden Fruits Candy Hearts (“All the cool blood-sucking teen vampires are doing it … chomping on these fruity candy hearts instead of mortal human necks!”)
To the non “Fanpire,” this might all seem a little bewildering, but as someone who grew up obsessed with collecting every “Star Wars” action figure, I can understand where they’re coming from.
To get an idea of the depth of passion fans feel for the series, you only have to check any of the dozens of official and unofficial sites dedicated to the books, the movies and the stars.
But as an indicator of how large the fanbase has become, see the proIMDB’s “Moviemeter," which ranks titles by how often their information is accessed by the 57 million users who visit the site per month.
Updated weekly, the top movie rising from the 3 billion monthly page views is usually a current box-office champ (this week it’s “Fast & Furious”), but “Twilight” and “New Moon” occupy the number two and three spots no matter what.
So, right now, more people are searching out “Twilight," even a year after release, or “New Moon," six months before it opens, than are finding details on the upcoming “Star Trek," “Transformers," “X-Men," “Angels & Demons," “Terminator” or “Harry Potter” movies.
With that in mind, I went onto the message boards to ask a few fans what they thought about the “Twilight” and “New Moon” movies.
