Turns out, Robert Pattinson helped make spider-monkeys immortal.
The “Twilight” actor selected the now-iconic (or infamous) “You better hold on tight, spider-monkey” line out of a series of phrases that writer/director Catherine Hardwicke came up with on set.
Hardwicke told Entertainment Weekly while at Comic Con 2024 that the enduring phrase from the 2008 film was Pattinson’s idea to include.
“I was kind of worried,” Hardwicke said about filming the often-silent romance between Pattinson’s Edward and Kristen Stewart‘s Bella. “We were shooting for a few days and there were so many scenes where they just look into each other’s eyes. ‘Look, look, look.’ And I’m like, man, I better come up with some dialogue.”
Hardwicke wrote different lines for Pattinson to say, and lo and behold, the spider-monkey pet name for Bella stood out.
“I handed them to Rob, and I said, ‘See if you like any of these. If you do, you can say them,’” Hardwicke recalled. “And he said, ‘I like spider-monkey.’”
She added that Pattinson was also “self-conscious” at times because of Edward’s described beauty in Stephanie Meyer’s novel.
“You have a lot to live up to when you have this book that makes him the most fascinating and beautiful creature on earth,” Hardwicke said. “That’s kind of intimidating.”
Meanwhile, Hardwicke herself found it more intimidating to figure out how to bring certain more sci-fi elements of the novel to the screen, especially due to a small budget for the indie adaptation. The scene in which Edward reveals his translucent skin to Bella stood out as a particular worry of Hardwicke’s.
“That made me quite nervous, the sparkling,” she said. “Because we had a tight budget on the first ‘Twilight’ — and sparkles cost a lot of money, OK. CGI is expensive.”
Hardwicke continued, “When you read the book, when they’re in the meadow, it seems like they’re out there for 10 minutes, chilling and sparkling. And I was like, ‘Oh no, we need to limit it.’ We made it a moment of a reveal where he steps into that beam of light.”
And the “Twilight” franchise is getting a reboot, sparkles and all, as a TV series which is currently in the works. Meyer is expected to be involved in the adaptation, as well as film franchise producers Wyck Godfrey and Erik Feig who will executive produce. Sinead Daly will be writing the show.
