'Twilight' Originally Had Bella Swan Blasting Vampires With a Shotgun

Hold tight, spider monkeys! The original script for Twilight was very different from how the vampire romance adaptation eventually appeared onscreen. 

Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke and Mark Lord, who wrote the first draft for the franchise, spoke about the lesser-known plot for the first film on The Big Hit Show podcast. 

"They wanted to take the concept [of Romeo and Juliet with vampires] and build in a structure that was far more a cinematic structure," Lord shared of the initial concept for the film. "And they wanted to just put in more action to advance it more and give something more for the male audience. They thought they were going to lose the male audience with too much of a romance." 

Lord added that he wanted Bella to be a "stronger" female character "as opposed to just mooning over this guy."

Lord's script had Bella blasting vampires away with a shotgun. 

"Do you want her to do nothing? I want that girl to shoot some vampires. I want her to blow some s**t away," Lord shared. 

But after Hardwicke got involved with the project, she insisted that the script get canned. 

"I said, 'First of all, this script's got to go in the trash. It's no good. You've got to make it like the book,'" Hardwicke shared. "The original script literally had Bella on jet skis being chased by the FBI. She was the star athlete, nothing to do with the book." 

Eventually, the task of writing the final script was given to Melissa Rosenberg, who went on to pen the scripts for all five Twilight films. 

ET recently spoke with Twilight star Kristen Stewart about the newfound popularity for the series now that the films are on Netflix. 

"It's rad, I don't know, I haven't really ... that hasn't touched me yet," Stewart told ET. "I can't wait for someone who's 12 or 15 to suddenly think, like, it's like when you're little and you tell your parents how great Jimi Hendrix is or something -- not to say that I'm remotely comparing my life to Jimi Hendrix -- but you know what I mean where they're like, 'Dude, you don't even know, it's like, so sick.' I do, I was in that."

For more, watch the clip below: 

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