Melissa Rosenberg Talks Difficulty of Adapting Book to Screen

Collider has an interview with Melissa Rosenberg were she discusses some of the difficulties she had in adapting the second half of Breaking Dawn into a two hour movie. She talks about the need for special effects as well as writing for thirty new characters, all with deep backstories, who only get about a minute or two of screen time.  Read the whole interview at Collider

Were there any of those new vampire characters you wish you could have explored more? ROSENBERG: Oh, all of them! Absolutely! For the very smallest characters, Stephenie has this very complex, rich history, for each one. Any one of them, for me, were so cool. There just wasn’t the time [to tell all of their backstories]. Pacing dictated what stayed in and what didn’t. Did you catch yourself writing too much for any of the characters, in particular? ROSENBERG: Yeah, the character of Garrett. I wanted to write more for Garrett and Kate because I love that relationship, and Alistair. I had more for the Amazons because Stephenie has such a complex backstory for them. I love those guys. They’re women of few words, but who doesn’t love an Amazon? How challenging was it to add all of these new characters without overshadowing the main story? ROSENBERG: The challenge was bringing in all of these characters and not leaving any of them out. You’re introducing each one and, in many cases, I had to just [give their name]. You have to keep the drive going, which is that the bad guys are coming, so you have to fight them off and find an army. It was a very tricky balance between those two. Was it exciting to see all of the vampire powers brought to life, from off of the page? ROSENBERG: It all has to be written, and that was something Bill was very helpful with. It has to be on the page. How do you show Bella’s shield? That was the hardest thing to do, from a writer’s standpoint. In that case, it was making suggestions, and then Bill and the special effects guys had to figure out what that actually looked like. I wrote, “She’s standing there and puts a shield over Edward. We see a little ripple in the air.” But, it’s very hard to imagine. I’m not sitting there with effects people. I’m just sitting there with the black page and going, “What does that look like?!” So, I did my best, and then Bill and I went back and forth while he talked me through his vision. And then, the special effects guys got ahold of it and I was like, “Okay, now I see it!”