Eclipse star's fanged lips are sealed

Another secret was lifted last week from the slim shoulders of actor Jodelle Ferland.

The teenage Vancouverite had to keep a lid on her excitement early last year when she was first cast in the third Twilight movie, Eclipse.

As word on casting trickled out last summer, Ferland was told she couldn't say she was cast as Bree, a young girl made to be part of a vampire army by the evil Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard). That gag order was lifted prior to filming in the fall.

"There's quite a lot of secrecy involved with Eclipse," says Ferland. "Everything they tell me, I have to wait a long time before I tell anyone."

When Ferland, 15, got to the woodsy North Vancouver set in October, the filmmakers laid another secret on her: Twilight author Stephenie Meyer had written another book, a then-unreleased novella dealing specifically with Bree's story.

In the novel, the character of Bree shows up for just a couple of pages in Eclipse's climax before meeting a violent end. Eclipse director David Slade knew about the new manuscript, and asked Meyer if she would let Ferland, Howard and actor Xavier Samuel read it. Samuel plays another member of Victoria's army.

Meyer is wary about letting her unpublished pages out of her sight ever since an earlier unfinished manuscript found its way onto the Internet.

"David asked Stephenie if it would be possible for the three of us to be able to read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner so that we got the backstory," says Ferland.

She can talk now because The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner hits bookstore shelves across North America over the weekend. The book tells more about how young Bree went from being a nice Seattle teen to a blood-starved vampire.

But last October, as they read the manuscript, they were sworn to secrecy, and didn't want to take any chances with those pages.

"We didn't know how exactly to destroy it, we were filming on location in the woods, so we finally decided to put it in a bucket and burn it."

Which seems like a very Twilight thing to do, come to think of it.

And with the mad fan frenzy for everything Twilight, you have to wonder whether the producers have already started thinking of a Bree movie. Any such plans would likely follow the filming this fall of the fourth book Breaking Dawn.

Another Twilight-related movie after Breaking Dawn? A slam-dunk, right Jodelle?

"That would be amazing if the they decided to make a movie about the Bree Tanner book, but I don't know what their plans are."

Or so she says now.

Meanwhile, she's heading to Louisiana this summer to film a movie with Chazz Palminteri and Andie MacDowell.

Eclipse hits theatres June 30.


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