Variety is reporting that director Catharine Hardwicke has decided not to direct New Moon, the sequel to Twilight, the extremely popular film ($138.6 million in just 17 days) based on the vampire romance novel by Stephenie Meyer. Twilight, which moved back to the #2 spot over the past weekend, posted the biggest opening weekend ever for a film directed by a woman.
The problem is that Summit Entertainment wants to have New Moon in theaters by the end of 2009 or early in 2010, an extremely quick turnaround for the production of a sequel. According to Variety Hardwicke feels that the script for New Moon still needs months of development, and that
