For Catherine Hardwicke, "Twilight" is a gift from the Sundance Film Festival. She was a juror at the 2007 festival and had taken some time to meet with fledgling independent Summit Entertainment while in Park City, Utah. Hardwicke recalls, "They said, 'Hey, we'd love to do a project with you. Here are five things we want to do this year. Tell us if you're interested in any.' The other four? Uh-uh. But I read the script for this one and went, 'This is pretty cool.'"

Based on Stephenie Meyer's best-seller, "Twilight" is a tale that's been told for centuries -- but with a twist. Bella (Kristen Stewart) has fallen deeply in love with her schoolmate Edward (Robert Pattinson), except there's one problem: He's a vampire. The book already has a hard-core female fan base, but it's up to Hardwicke to broaden it for a wider audience. It turns out Meyer's romance already contained all the ammunition she needed.

"The book stays a lot in Bella's head, but sometimes she implies a lot of action and we show it," Hardwicke says. "[In one scene] Bella passes out when the venom starts going in her and she doesn't see the whole action the way Edward does. We see it all, in a big way. We see the dismemberment, the fire. We see [another vampire's head] being spinned off by a chick! We see it."

That begs the question: With that sort of violence, can "Twilight" earn a PG-13 rating?

"Shhhh, don't tell," Hardwicke jokes, but then adds that, because of the venom, "It's a little out of focus."

Figuring out who would play Bella and Edward was probably Hardwicke's most difficult task. She initially determined Stewart, who recently shined in "Into the Wild," would be perfect for Bella, but she recruited several actors to screen-test for Edward. She immediately saw something special when Stewart and Pattinson were paired together.

"I have my bed, where I auditioned the girls in 'Thirteen.' I know, it's a wacky bed, but whatever," Hardwicke says. "I'm like, 'OK, let's do the love scene, the kissing scene where he comes in.' And they did that and you could definitely see tension and chemistry. It was intense right from the beginning! And I was like, 'I'm starting to feel the magic!' I started to feel like, 'I could make a good movie. This could be good.' Because you are always nervous before then."

An acclaimed production designer before she began her directing career, Hardwicke has shown her filmmaking talent in the original aesthetic she brought to her directorial debut "Thirteen" and "Lords of Dogtown." "Twilight" will be no different.

Hardwicke admits, "That's one thing I liked about it. Who has ever seen vampires in the Pacific Northwest rainforest, dripping with moss and weird shafts of light? I thought, 'That's a cool concept. That pale skin vampire in that green.' That vivid green and the wetness and you see everything we do. We wet down the streets. Everything has moss all over it. It's actually very creepy and cool."

"Twilight" opens nationwide Dec. 12.

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