The Twilight novel leaked in 2008 is actually getting published in 2020

Stephenie Meyer’s Midnight Sun, a novel that accounts the events of her hit 2005 novel Twilight through vampire Edward Cullen’s point of view, will hit shelves on Aug. 4, 2020. The author announced to Good Morning America, and immediately her website went down.

“I am very excited to finally, finally announce the release of Midnight Sun on August 4. It’s a crazy time right now and I wasn’t sure if this was the right time to put this book out, but some of you have been waiting for just so, so long. It didn’t seem fair to make you wait anymore. Sorry about the bad timing. Hopefully this book can be a distraction from the real world,” Meyer said to Good Morning America. “I’m so excited to finally be able to share it with you.”

If this alternate POV Twilight sounds like a serious case of deja vu to you, it’s because Meyer’s been working on Midnight Sun since the 2000s, sharing the novel with Twilight film director Catherine Hardwicke and Robert Pattinson, who would go onto play Edward Cullen in all five Twilight films. The novel leaked in 2008 and Meyer, jaded by the internet world, halted all work on it and published the 12 completed chapters on her website. In 2015, after her gender-swapped redux of Twilight, Meyer stated she was comfortable enough to begin working on it again — but then became jaded again when she saw that the trending story on her Yahoo page was about Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian, based on 50 Shades of Grey, itself based on Twilight fanfic.

Twilight currently holds a special place in online fandom, where fans of the novels and movies delight in some of the franchise’s absurdity while also acknowledging some of the saga’s more controversial elements, like the borderline abusive relationship between Bella and Edward and the warping of Quileute culture. Without an author’s words to muddy their fun, fans have reclaimed Twilight from mainstream vitriol and turned it into fodder for shitposts. Lack of author involvement was the precise thing that made the Twilight saga see a renaissance in 2018, but fans seem very eager to return to a beloved teen franchise.

Midnight Sun’s release will follow in the heels of another YA franchise getting a belated spinoff: the Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which releases on May 20. Both book franchises spun off incredibly successful movie sagas on the heels of Harry Potter’s success. And just like Harry Potter, both waited a moment before gearing up for spinoffs. Whether Midnight Sun is just seeing an old project through or if it means a full blown Twilight saga redux has yet to be revealed. Check out the cover below:

Image: Little Brown

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