What it means that Stephenie Meyer will serve as 'producer' on 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn'

Stephenie Meyer - AP PhotoToday's announcement that Bill Condon will direct The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn came with another in-laid piece of news: Stephenie Meyer will serve as producer on the film for the first time in her Twilight film career.

A lot of you have reached out with inquiries about what it means that she'll serve as a producer, so here's the basic gist of what a producer is, does, and how it relates to Stephenie Meyer and Breaking Dawn.

For starters, a producer, by generic definition is "the person on a movie set who makes sure everyone shows up and knows what to do when—and who knows beforehand what’s being served for lunch."

Prior Twilight Saga film producers, whose names you might recognize, include Wyck Godfrey and Karen Rosenfelt (who'll return to that position for Breaking Dawn, according to the announcement) as well as Greg Mooradian. We've also had "executive producers" (definition: "often owns the rights to a book or story idea or secures at least 25 percent of the film's budget . . . rarely have creative or technical involvement and are often caught up with several projects at once") like Marty Bowen, Michele Imperato Stabile, Guy Oseary, and Mark Morgan; "co-producers" (definition: "works under the producer and often helps with casting, financing, or postproduction") such as Jamie Marshall and Bill Bannerman; "associate producers" ("a largely honorary title") like Patrick Thomas Smith and David Roker; and "consulting producers" (definition: "generally a high-level writer who is contributing . . . but is not one of the principal forces").


You're probably thinking: there's no way Stephenie Meyer is taking a producer role to make sure the actors show up or have lunch on the table every day. No doubt you're right about that.

Instead, she's probably just working out a more hands-on role for herself in this, the fourth Twilight series film based on her books. There are likely some details or nuances about the story or filmmaking process that she'd like a heavy hand in, understandably, and working as a producer rather than simply being the source material affords her more opportunity to have a say-so in day-to-day details of filmmaking for this project.

You might remember when Robert Pattinson assumed a role on the film Remember Me as executive producer and his words as to why that happened: "I just didn’t want it to be messed around with . . . I didn’t want it to be compromised in any way . . . anything I could do to help to maintain the film . . ."

With Stephenie Meyer and Breaking Dawn, the case is probably similar. This is no cause for alarm for Twilight fans at all. In fact, for some it may be a reason to celebrate.

Examiner