After months of media speculation, it was finally confirmed this week that Robert Pattinson is engaged to be married to Twilight star Kristen Stewart. We take a look at the couple’s relationship, how they met and what their future holds.
Robert Pattinson And Kristen Stewart
Rob Pattinson, born in London in 1986, rose to fame playing the lead role of Edward Cullen in the Twilight Saga. The story of Twilight was initially inspired by Anne Rice’s best-selling novel The Vampire Lestat, and tells the tale of a young man who falls in love with a girl and then discovers he is actually part of a race of vampire hunters known as the Volturi. The Twilight Saga is now one of the most popular film series of all time, having made more than £370 million ($535 million) at the box office and counting. Its success led directly to Pattinson’s casting in David Cronenberg’s Maps To The Stars, in which he plays a man who is terrorised by a talking spider.
Despite her fame, Stewart has mostly stayed out of the spotlight since the Twilight franchise wrapped in 2015. The Californian-born actress enjoyed a very successful second career after marrying director Rupert Sanders in 2016. The two had previously collaborated on the 2015 horror film Jennifer’s Body, in which Stewart plays a young woman named Jennifer who teams up with a vampire to search for her kidnapped sister.
A Brief History Of The Twilight Saga
The Twilight Saga is actually a trilogy of films connecting the stories of Bella (Bella Thorne), a 17-year-old high school student who feels trapped in her family’s trailer park in Forks, Washington, and Edward Cullen, a famous and wealthy vampire (Pattinson) who falls in love with her. The series was first published between August 2010 and November 2011 and made £74 million ($105 million) on its opening weekend in the UK alone, becoming the fastest-grossing film series ever in that country. It also became the highest-grossing non-English-speaking film of all time in Turkey and in Arabic cinema. It currently holds the record for the highest-grossing film for an R-rated movie in China’s movie history. The total worldwide gross is £314 million ($455 million).
The Twilight Saga is based on Stephenie Meyer’s wildly popular novel of the same name, published in 2005. The novel was initially rejected by 12 publishers before being accepted by Little, Brown and Company, which released it in August in the UK and in North America in May 2006. In the summer of 2021, the 20th anniversary edition of The Twilight Saga will be released on digital stores and in selected cinemas worldwide. The DVD and Blu-ray versions will be available from 26th June 2021.
During an interview with Elle in 2016, Pattinson revealed that the first Twilight novel had sold 16m copies worldwide and that the last film installment had made $12.7m in its first weekend, equating to roughly £8.5m (based on an average price of movies at the time of £7.95).
A Brief History Of The Love Story
The plot of the Twilight series follows Bella’s journey from a shy and awkward teenager to a brave and independent young woman. On the road to becoming a grown-up, she battles an evil vampire (the soulless Renesmee) and a werewolf (the gorgeous Jacob Black) in a race to protect her family and friends from a predatory vampire named Edward. Despite the obstacles, Bella grows stronger throughout the series and overcomes her fears. She also learns to rely on the support of those she cares about most and ultimately grows to love and respect her father’s best friend, Edward. Edward eventually accepts her love and the quintessential ‘twilight’ love story is sealed.
In July 2017, director and producer David O. Russell revealed that the film’s budget was $20m (£15.3m) and that it took place mostly in Vancouver. According to a report by the BBC, production designer K.C. Wills estimated that it took 7,000-8,000 hours to design and build the vampire-inducing Forks high school and its environs. (The site noted that Wills is a pseudonym referring to the town’s original founder, Catherine Trammel.)
The film was released in the UK on 14th November 2017 and went on to become the country’s fifth-largest opening weekend film ever, with 129,934 tickets sold. It later emerged that only six per cent of UK viewers had actually read the book on which the film was based, with three-quarters opting to watch the movie first and read the novel afterwards.
How Did They Meet?
While we wait for news of the wedding, let’s take a trip back in time to the early 2000s and revisit the way things used to be. In 2003, the Twilight Saga broke box-office records in its native UK, grossing £6.7m and becoming the country’s fourth-highest-grossing film of all time. It went on to become one of the world’s biggest film series of all time, with $846m (£671m) grossed worldwide. It has since been followed by a new film in the series every year, with the exception of 2015 when a TV series was released instead.
It seems like only yesterday that we were enjoying the trilogy of films that would make up the Twilight Saga, but it’s been a decade since we first laid eyes on Bella and her vampire brethren. In that time, the series has spawned a whole host of spin-offs and merchandise, and remains one of the most popular franchises of all time. Here’s a clip from the very first Twilight film featuring a young Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black, a werewolf who falls in love with Bella and seeks redemption for his past mistakes. It turns out that redemption is something of a habit in this series. We also meet Edward’s (Pattinson) younger brother Vincent (Kellan Lutz) for the first time, who is hunting down his future wife, Bella. Aww…
The Future Will Tell
We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds for the couple. They’ve been very open about their relationship and seem to enjoy each other’s company. According to a tweet from Bella in December, 2019, they have no plans to split up. The actress is currently filming her first Hollywood film, The House Between, based on the novel The House of Hades by Rick Riordan. The movie is due for release in April 2021.
The Twilight saga has been a wild ride for movie fans, and a lot of fun to follow. While we wait for the next instalment in the series, let’s take a trip down memory lane and revisit the highs and lows of the last 10 years.