For Catherine Hardwicke, it wasn’t quite a case of love at first bite. More like second bite.

While serving on the dramatic jury at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007, the critically acclaimed director of Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown and The Nativity Story was approached by Summit Entertainment about a script inspired by Twilight, Stephenie Meyer’s best-seller about a teen named Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) who falls in love with a gorgeous guy named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson)—who turns out to be a vampire.

Hardwicke was interested, but it wasn’t until she drank deeply from Meyer’s prose that she truly fell for the story of Bella and Edward.

“Before I went into the meeting, I read the book and thought it was so much better than the script,” Hardwicke said. “So I said, ‘Let’s throw away that script and write one that’s really similar to the book.’”

Those were exactly the words that the fanatical fans of the series—who have bought millions of copies of Twilight and its sequels New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn and built hundreds, if not thousands, of fan sites—wanted to hear.

Listen to Hardwicke's exclusive interview with B OXOFFICE here .