SANTA MONICA, California — Over the weekend, “Twilight” actor Kellan Lutz officially began the process of stepping into the vampire flick’s highly anticipated sequels. But when he spoke to us just before leaving for the set, we learned that the man called Emmett Cullen knows some things and doesn’t know others — and somehow both are equally revelatory.

“I’m really excited for ‘New Moon,’ ” grinned the 23-year-old star, stopping by MTV’s offices Wednesday to promote the “Twilight” DVD hitting stores March 21. “I go on Sunday the 8th to rehearse and do our screen tests and make sure the contacts fit — which I’m not looking forward to. But we do rehearsals for about a week, and then I go up in April and we start shooting.”

and AnnaLynne McCord are potentials in it, but I think that’s all the stuff like ‘Michael Copon to play Jacob,’ ” he laughed, remembering the actor who had supposedly taken the role from Taylor Lautner. “I’ve known AnnaLynne for years now. It would be fun to work with her, but I won’t have any scenes with her; [she'd be] doing the Italy stuff.

“Her potential character is Heidi. I think they’re looking for someone who is local up in Vancouver,” he revealed of the recent casting scuttlebutt. “I don’t know what the chances are of her getting it.”

Along those same lines, we had to ask Kellan about the rumor that Jacob’s American-Indian friends (including fan favorite Solomon Trimble) are being replaced for the sequels, and he revealed that some unnamed friends are in the running to populate the Quileute tribe.

“I know [casting director] Joseph Middleton has been reading some of my friends for the werewolves’ parts,” Lutz told us, saying that new director Chris Weitz is determined to keep the American-Indian actors genuine this time. “[They're] really sticking to them and making sure of their ancestry, that they are real Native Americans. They asked a buddy of mine to bring in his family tree to show that he was part Navajo! It’s interesting; I really think it is important to have somewhat-real Native Americans to play these roles to some degree, but it’s really interesting to see the way things are handled.”

Asked for the names of his possible Quileute friends, Lutz grinned. “I could tell you,” he replied, “but then I’d have to hurt you.”

The most interesting revelation of our interview, however, might have been for Lutz rather than us. When we asked him about Summit Entertainment’s announcement two weeks ago of the release date for “Eclipse,” the actor was genuinely surprised to hear the news that he’d be immersed in Emmett until at least mid-2010.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard that!” he marveled. “I’m the last to know anything. It’s been funny doing these conventions that a bunch of us castmembers have been doing, to a bunch of states and countries. The fans know more of what’s going on with our jobs than I do!”

Good news fanggirls: Kristen Stewart says there will be a fourth Twilight movie. She can’t imagine why there wouldn’t be a big-screen adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn, the last novel in her young vampire series.

As we all know by now, Twilight was one of last year’s biggest hits, New Moon starts shooting any minute now, and the studio most recently announced they’ve officially started work on developing Eclipse.
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We were fortunate enough to get a chance to talk with Twilight mega-star Kristen Stewart (aka ‘Bella Swan’) at her press day for a sweet little indie she did for Mary Stuart Masterson called The Cake Eaters, and of course we made sure to get the Twilight scoop.

When asked what she thought about the bad press she’s been getting in the wake of her Nylon interview, Stewart is adamant that her words are being taken out of context—professing, believably might I add—to having nothing but the utmost respect and care for the Twilight story and situation as a whole. “I love the Twilight fans. I have literally never said anything remotely negative about them,” she told us.

So all the hullaballoo? She attributed that to learning the ropes about what is going to read in print and what isn’t. “You have to stay away from certain key words that can be twisted in a negative connotation. Like the word ‘psychotic’ apparently is really bad,” she said, provoking laughter around the table.

“I feel like it’s a really humble position to take that it’s not normal—you know what I mean?—to find yourself in a situation where there are 5,000 screaming girls. I feel like that’s not normal and it’s not something I should just say, ‘Oh yeah, it’s really cool, I love them,’” she continued. “I feel like everything I said in that Nylon interview, if you actually read the whole thing, was very honest and genuine and talking about something that I am so immersed in and I have absolutely no control over. And I’m just trying to stay honest and true to something that I care about.”

According to Stewart, cameras are set to start rolling on the next installment of the Twilight saga, New Moon, on March 23rd and she’s eager to dive back in. “It’s a completely different story. It’s like it completely undermines the first,” she explained. “Edward’s gone and for me that was the whole story. It’s hard for me to get past—I don’t know how Bella’s going to deal with that. She matures. A lot. And it’s a much more painful story than the first one. It’s actually quite devastating. It’s a smaller scale as well. She’s very solitary for quite a while, so that will be interesting. I’m excited about that.”

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Booksellers say Meyer’s books are helping fill the void left by Harry Potter after the last instalment in the stories the boy wizard was published in 2007.

Publishers had fretted openly about how they would maintain sales after the publication of the final part of the series Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Figures published by the retailer amazon.com show Meyer’s books dominating the top 10 lists for the last year in Britain, the US, Canada and France, enjoying an international success not seen since the height of “Potter-mania”.

In many of the national lists, compiled to chart international reading habits for World Book Day on Thursday her name appears two or three times in the top 10.

The American author has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide of her series Twilight – which was made into a film – New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn.

Kes Nielsen, head of books buying at the British arm amazon.co.uk said it was rare for a book to have such appeal in many different countries at the same time.

“Stephenie Meyer, in particular, has achieved incredible success across all the English-speaking nations and Europe and many will say that her Twilight series has filled the hole left by Harry Potter.

“Indeed, I don’t think we have seen one author have so many books in the best-sellers lists since J K Rowling in the early days of the boy wizard.”

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Spoiler alert: If you want to find out how Twilight ends, all you need to do is pick up the book. The film, which comes out this November, is an adaptation of the first volume in Arizona author Stephenie Meyer’s popular vampire quadrilogy, a set of sentimental tales about the impossible love between an ordinary 17-year-old high school girl and her classmate, a beautiful 110-year-old bloodsucker, who refuses to bite her and damn her to his sort of immortality. In other words, it’s your regular teenage romance. “The story has elements of Romeo + Juliet and Titanic,” says director Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown, Thirteen), “but it’s also got sexual tension, the supernatural, and a guy who’s fighting his own impulses in order to stay in the relationship. It’s really very sexy. Who hasn’t fallen for the wrong person? It’s like, ‘I know that this is the last person I should let my heart go to, but it’s already gone.’”

So far, audiences seem sold on the film, sight unseen. Twilight cost $37 million to make, but judging from the groundswell of support from Meyer’s fans—many of them teenage girls—producers should have little trouble recouping their costs, especially considering the ensemble cast of young male heartthrobs they’ve assembled. Meyer may not be J.K. Rowling, but she’s certainly no slouch. The final book in the series, Breaking Dawn, sold about 1.3 million copies on the day it was released last August (about a sixth of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ first day). Translation rights to the books have been sold in thirty-three different countries, and the second, New Moon, spent thirty-three weeks on the New York Times children’s best-seller list. Vampire stories have some staying power—especially vampire stories about lovelorn kids.

In adapting the first book, Hardwicke and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg opted to stay faithful to Meyer’s narrative. (Probably a wise decision, considering how rabid the readership is.) Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is an average teen living in Phoenix who decides to move to her father’s house in Forks, Washington, a dreary place where it rains three-quarters of the year, to give her mother and her new stepfather time to travel. At school, Bella meets Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), an alluring and initially distant presence, whom she begins to suspect is a vampire. As it turns out, Edward belongs to a coven of beautiful vegetarian vamps—a family of sorts, brought together by a shared mandate to drink animal blood instead of the human kind.

The two begin a relationship, fraught with all the usual, uh, interfaith difficulties. Meanwhile, a rival group of equally beautiful but less friendly bloodsuckers descends on the town, one of whom decides to hunt Bella for sport. The chase is on, and it’s up to Edward to save her. “It’s just such a great metaphor for unrequited love,” says Rosenberg. “Bella feels very normal, and that can be hard when she’s surrounded by these modelesque figures, who are so difficult to relate to physically. It’s the same for any kid growing up in L.A., when you’re surrounded by models and actors.”

Perhaps energized by the beauty-myth subtext and the allure of forbidden love, Meyer’s fan base has proven to be an active one. Groups like Twilighters, Twi-Hards, and even Twilight Moms have organized online, and in July they flocked to San Diego’s Comic-Con, where Meyer, Hardwicke, Rosenberg, and members of the principal cast showed footage and took questions from the crowd—at least when they could be heard over the screams. The response to actors Robert Pattinson, Cam Gigandet, and Taylor Lautner was “a little like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan,” Rosenberg recalls. “It was insanity.” The coming-of-age story’s sequels have yet to be planned, but given the reaction so far, Hardwicke is sanguine about her chances of revisiting the series. “I mean,” she says, “who wouldn’t want to be bitten on the neck by a handsome vampire?”

TWILIGHT IS OUT IN NOVEMBER 2008 FROM SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

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