The Twilight movies were never what you'd call critical darlings, but they did (and still do) have legions of loyal fans that propelled the five-film series to massive success at the box office.
Of course, there are just as many people who can't fathom how anyone could sit through more than five minutes of "sparkly vampire" nonsense, and even casual fans would have to admit that certain aspects of the story - particularly in the final movie, Breaking Dawn - Part 2, were more than a little... odd.
It seems we can put filmmaker Sofia Coppola in the latter category.
During an interview with Rolling Stone, the Priscilla director revealed that she met with someone from Warner Bros. about potentially signing on to helm the movie, but declined the opportunity when she realized it was simply a bit "too weird" for her to wrap her head around.
"We had one meeting, and it never went anywhere," Coppola said. "I thought the whole imprinting-werewolf thing was weird. The baby. Too weird! But part of the earlier Twilight could be done in an interesting way. I thought it'd be fun to do a teen-vampire romance, but the last one gets really far out."
Just in case you haven't seen the film or read the book, Coppola is referring to Jacob "imprinting" on Edward and Bella's creepy CGI daughter, Renesmee. Basically, this means that the wolf-boy feels an irresistible emotional pull towards the child because he's found his soulmate. The newborn baby. Is his soulmate.
Breaking Dawn - Part 1 director Bill Condon ultimately stayed on to helm the final instalment, and the imprinting scene in question turned out just as ridiculous as it sounds.
Coppola was also set to direct an earlier live-action take on The Little Mermaid for Universal Pictures and Working Title back in 2014, but her version would have been a lot more faithful to the much darker Hand Christian Anderson tale.
In the same interview, Coppola explains why she decided to step away from the project.
“Yes, there was [a breaking point]. I was in a boardroom and some development guy said, ‘What’s gonna get the 35-year-old man in the audience?’ And I just didn’t know what to say. I just was not in my element. I feel like I was naive, and then I felt a lot like the character in the story, trying to do something out of my element, and it was a funny parallel of the story for me.”