Lionsgate is developing five short films based on Twilight characters

After five films, you would have thought you could escape the melodramatic tripe that was TWILIGHT, but here comes a new contest from Lionsgate to create new tales rooted in the vampire/werewolf universe. Coming from a collaborative contest involving Facebook, crowd-sourcing site Tongal, the Women in Film organization, and a panel of judges including TWILIGHT creator Stephanie Meyer, Kristen Stewart, Kate Winslet, Julie Bowen, Octavia Spencer, FROZEN director Jennifer Lee, and Katherine Hardwicke.

The contest is officially called “The Storytellers – New Creative Voices of The Twilight Saga" and will allow filmmakers to pull from Meyer's official illustrated guidebook to the fictional universe, allowing minor or side characters to be expanded and have their stories told in film form. Here's how it will work.

The campaign will center on a multiphase contest culminating in the selection of at least five aspiring female filmmakers to direct short films based on characters from the Twilight universe. The films will be produced and directed with the mentorship of a blue chip panel of advisors, which will ultimately select the winning shorts that will premiere exclusively on the Facebook platform next year.

While TWILIGHT may be a joke for many, this seems like a pretty cool contest to try and get more female voices involved in the film industry behind the camera. There is a very lacking number of female directors in the movie industry, although I don't see anything here outright saying men cannot enter the contest.

In either case, while these shorts are not necessarily coming to a theater near you, I thought you deserved fair warning that your friends or loved ones may start talking about Volvo-driving, sparkling vampires again very soon.