10 Years Of Twilight

Can you believe it’s been a whole decade since the epic saga splashed onto our screens? We explore the Twilight mania and the buzz of a reboot!

At the height of Twilight mania, lead stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, aka Robsten, couldn’t even walk down the street without being mobbed.

“I had people sitting outside my house every single day, and it drove me crazy,” Rob, 32, says of the heady days of Twihards. “I didn’t go into a supermarket for about six years. But now I can go in and chat to the guy who’s working there about his kids, or where he’s going on holiday, and not be thinking, ‘Is he gonna sell me out?’ I just don’t have to think about that stuff anymore.”

But while Twilight hysteria has now died down, the legacy of the teen franchise lives on 10 years after the first film of the five-part series was released.

A bloody phenomenon

“On one hand, it’s 10 years ago – it’s wild, it’s surreal to think about that – but on the other, my memories are still so close to me, it doesn’t feel like a lifetime ago necessarily,” says Rob’s co-star and ex-love Kristen Stewart.

And it’s clear why the franchise – which spawned four follow-up films – was more than just a passing fad.

Twilight broke so many Hollywood boundaries – and records! Not only did it put a female lead at the centre of a major studio franchise for the first time, but it sparked a frenzy among the studios to snatch up other young adult books with big screen potential. It also made Rob, Kristen and many of their co-stars household names.

“I find it amazing, the intensity of people liking it. It’s crazy,” Rob says of the 2008 flick in which he first played young vampire Edward Cullen. “It’s an elemental thing that it connected to, which I still don’t understand.”

Box-office boon