Cliff Annicelli

Twilight's Chances?

Thought I’d point out an interesting story from Variety columnist Anne Thompson about Summit Entertainment’s efforts to turn Stephenia Meyer’s best-selling young adult romance series about (seemingly) teenage vampires into a Harry Potter-level movie franchise.

The movie adaptation of Meyer’s first vampire book, Twilight, hits theaters on Nov. 21, and NECA, apparently, has the license for action figures. [I say “apparently” because, despite there being a photo of an Edward Cullen action figure floating around the Web, you’d be hard pressed to prove NECA’s actually doing anything related to the movie as nothing’s been officially “announced” that I’ve seen—not even on NECA’s own website. But product is already up on Amazon.com (keychains and apparel, mostly) so maybe I just missed it ... I’ll admit the collector’s spectrum of the toy business isn’t an area I spend much time digging around in.]

What has me curious is how well this property, being that it’s a fantasy romance generally expected to appeal primarily to teenage girls and young women, will do in the male-dominated collectible toy space. Pundits like Thompson seem to think the property’s vampires will appeal to men, but the jury’s out on that if you ask me. I know lots of guys who liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer—me being one of them—but don’t know of any who bought merchandise based on the characters (including yours truly). I hadn't put much thought into it except for the last 30 seconds, but I'm not sure vampires are exactly "aspirational" for most guys—or girls, for that matter.   

I guess we'll see soon enough, though.

In the meantime, would love to hear your thoughts about a Twilight collectible toy line’s chances...

Posted by Cliff Annicelli on November 10, 2008 | Comments (3)