For the first time since 2007, there was no official “Twilight” presence at the Comic-Con panels this year. But screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg was in attendance, and she was more than willing to take a break from the convention to chat with MTV News about her upcoming work on “Breaking Dawn.” The two films are set to start shooting back-to-back in November, and Rosenberg said she is still working on finalizing the script.
Fans have been most concerned with how Bella’s (Kristen Stewart) pivotal, not to mention traumatic, birthing scene will be portrayed in the movie, and Rosenberg said she and director Bill Condon are continually revising the script to make it work. Despite an earlier comment, she said the scene will be included, but the specifics of how it will be represented have not been solidified yet.
“I’ve written and continue to rewrite it, working on it with Bill Condon … He has a vision as well, but it’s kind of a shared vision I would say, but ultimately it comes down to, what does he actually want to see?” she said. “I know what I want to see, which is, I want to see the terror of the experience. I want to have the experience of the fear and feel her pain. I want to feel everyone’s pain in this.”
Still, Rosenberg said that there are some of the gruesome elements of the scene — like Edward (Robert Pattinson) having to give Bella what has been dubbed a “vampire caesarian” — that she doesn’t think need to be included in the scene. “I want it to be visceral, so that is what’s most important. Do I want to see teeth in placenta? No,” she said. “Someone else may. I don’t actually want to see that, but to each his own.”
Another of the other big scenes in “Breaking Dawn” that has been the subject of some controversy is the imprinting scene. It features Jacob (Taylor Lautner) having what Rosenberg describes as a “spiritual experience” with Bella’s newborn child that ultimately leads to the revelation that the infant is his soul mate.
“One must be very careful with that,” Rosenberg said about the scene, “but hopefully you’ve taken this ride with Jacob for all four movies; you know Jacob, and so I think you’ll experience it the way he does, which is spiritually, as a spiritual experience, as an emotional experience and not something that makes one uncomfortable.”
