Stephenie Meyer is on Hollywood Reporter’s list of ’25 Most Powerful Authors’, and she has an interview to go along with the honor. In the interview, Meyer focuses on her upcoming movie ‘The Host’, and the differences and similarities between adapting ‘Twilight’ to film versus adapting ‘The Host’.
Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan
She talks whether she was scared about ‘The Host’ would be translated to film, saying, “ So many people had a hard time with that. The only three people I think who weren’t ever worried were me, Nick Wechsler, the producer, and Andrew Niccol, the director, because we all are like, ‘No, it’s obvious, totally obvious. You just need to have the most brilliant actress in the world and you don’t have a problem.’ And we got her, so we were really lucky. Saoirse [Ronan] is amazing. When you have an actress of that caliber, especially when not everybody knows who she is yet, I think she’s going to blow people away. And then you give her this concept role, it’s like a gift. She just loves to be able to do it and watching her — oh my gosh. There’s this one scene that has no music, it’s a close-up of her face for five minutes and you cannot look away. I mean, tears streaming down my face the first time I saw it. It was unreal.”
She also talks about being involved with the casting process, saying, “That was such a collaborative group. Nick brought me in from the very beginning. He wanted to do the movie and we got together. We kind of talked about how would you do this, and we both felt comfortable with it. Then he’s like, ‘What are your favorite science-fiction movies?’ My number one favorite science-fiction movie is Gattaca. Andrew Niccol was at the top of the list. I also really liked The Truman Showbecause it’s such an odd but cool concept, and Andrew wrote that originally as a thriller and not a comedy. I’d really love to see that script — someday, I’m gonna get to read that. [Nick’s] like, ‘Well, Andrew’s fantastic’ and he’d worked with him before, and Andrew wanted to do it. He’s never done an adaptation before, so that was really cool.”
Saoirse Ronan will headline 'The Host'
Finally, she compares Twilight to the Host and talks about whether she thinks it will become the same kind of phenomenon, saying, “It’s not something that I have to feel pressure over. For me, they’re so different and I don’t expect anything to be like Twilight again. That was such a weird experience and to have everything be so crazy and bizarre, that’s just not normal. The fanaticism isn’t normal. So I would imagine it’ll be a much more normal experience, but I’m sure for investors and the like, they would really feel a lot of pressure to have it be just the same. I think this story is very different, I think people respond to it very differently. I don’t think it will be the same phenomenon at all.
Stephenie Meyer speaks about 'The Host'
