‘Twilight’ Director Says Studio Gave Her ‘a Mini Cupcake’ to Celebrate Film’s Success

Catherine Hardwicke, the director behind the first Twilight movie, still thinks she perhaps was not rewarded enough for shepherding the adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s novels to box office hits.

While speaking with The Guardian, Hardwicke, 69, opened about her career and upcoming movie, Street Smart. In the interview published on Monday, July 7, the filmmaker recalled feeling that she was not rewarded for Twilight’s success after its 2008 release, even though the movie was a major hit at the box office and helped launch the careers of lead actors Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.

Hardwicke told the outlet that successful male directors in Hollywood may receive “a car, or a three-picture deal, or [getting] to do basically whatever you want” after finding success with one of their movies. For her, though, celebrating Twilight’s success with studio Summit Entertainment proved more mundane — and she did not even get the opportunity to direct any of the movie’s sequels.

“I walked into a room with all these gifts, and everybody was congratulating the studio, and they gave me a box,” she said. “I opened it up, and it was a mini cupcake.”

Filmmaker Chris Weitz was brought on as the director of the 2009 sequel New Moon; director David Slade was behind the camera on the third movie, Eclipse, and Bill Condon directed the two part Breaking Dawn movies that wrapped the vampire-romance saga. Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg adapted each of author Meyers’ books for the screen. 

A representative for Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment (Lionsgate acquired Summit in 2012) did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

Summit Entertainment announced that Hardwicke would not return to direct Twilight: New Moon in December 2008, just weeks after Twilight first debuted in theaters. At the time, Hardwicke said in a statement released by the studio that “due to timing I will not have the opportunity to direct New Moon,” as Deadline reported at the time.

When Reuters reported the news, it said that Summit’s plans to release New Moon just one year after the first Twilight movie “did not mesh with Hardwicke’s required prep time.”

“No, people aren’t going to hire more women directors,” Hardwicke told The Guardian of her experience with Twilight. “They’re not going to give you the next job and let you do something great. It was an earth-shattering reality right away.”

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Hardwicke, who has directed six movies and a number of television projects in the years since Twilight released, has raised questions about Hollywood’s attitude toward women filmmakers and young adult novel adaptations before. 

“There’s lots of projects like that,” she told Vanity Fair at the time, noting that the Hunger Games franchise, Divergent movies and Twilight sequels were all directed by men. “It goes on and on. They’re stories written by women, about women, and given to male directors. Over and over and over.”

Hardwicke’s new movie, Street Smart, does not yet have a release date.