Countdown to 'Twilight'

Thursday night ArcLight tickets have been secured, logistical battle plans made, and expectations not at all managed. Bottom line: This movie better be good. Really. Good.

We speak, of course, of "Twilight," the film version of the best-selling Stephenie Meyer teen-targeted vamp romance novel (starring Rob Pattinson, pictured above at the recent Rome premiere). It officially opens a week from today, with some early showings the night before. No way we were waiting until Friday.

There had already been talk of more movies, because there are four books, with a fifth reportedly started, leaked to the Web and then halted. Now THR says today that Summit Entertainment has acquired rights to "New Moon," "Eclipse" and "Breaking Dawn," hoping to make a franchise out of the serialized story that centers on regular high schooler Bella who falls in love with breathtakingly beautiful vampire Edward.

Dad doesn't cotton to him. And there's the whole undead thing. Awkwardness ensues.

Not to be too cynical, but we've seen this happen before, where a studio will put the cart before the horse, calling a project a franchise (often based on hot-selling books or video games) before the initial film is a hit. Just off the top of our heads, there's a sorry range from "Godzilla" to "The Golden Compass" fitting that description.

Really hoping that's not the case here.

We confessed our budding and completely embarrassing interest in the Meyer books in an earlier post -- yeah, we're out of the demo -- and since then have become, well, a little obsessive.

And like the majority of the "Twilight" series fans, we won't go along quietly. If we don't dig this first movie's script by Melissa Rosenberg, we won't trust her in the future (she's just been hired to write the next two). Catherine Hardwicke, who racked up some festival awards for her first feature, "thirteen," has directed "Twilight," but no word yet on whether she'll return.

Hopes are high, Summit, and we don't blame you for responding to the Beatlemania-like response to Pattinson and Co. But blow it on "Twilight" and you won't see us again. With or without a successful movie, maybe Meyer can be persuaded to pick up where she left off and finish "Midnight Sun," which is an origin-of-the-love-story told from Edward the vampire's perspective.

Somebody get to work on that!