Taylor Lautner Is ‘In’ For ‘New Moon’

So it looks like Taylor Lautner is in and Robert Pattinson is out. Don’t get freaked! Pattinson is out of another movie to make time for the sequel to Twilight – more on that second detail later.

For you Twilight fans wondering who will be playing Jacob in the sequel, New Moon, it turns out that it’ll be the same dude from the first movie!

That’s right ladies and gents, Taylor Lautner will be back for the sequel reprising his role as Jacob Black of the Quileute tribe. The character of Jacob who was a rather minor character in Twilight plays an increasingly bigger part in the later installments becoming one of the more main characters.

The author of the Twilight novels wrote on her website today the following message on behalf of the director of New Moon, Chris Weitz (who is replacing Catherine Hardwicke):

“I’m very happy to announce that Taylor Lautner will be playing Jacob Black in New Moon and that he’s doing so with the enthusiastic support of Summit Entertainment, the producers, and Stephenie Meyer.

The characters in Stephenie’s books go through extraordinary changes of circumstance and also appearance; so it is not surprising that there has been speculation about whether the same actor would portray a character who changes in so many surprising ways throughout the series. But it was my first instinct that Taylor was, is, and should be Jacob, and that the books would be best served by the actor who is emotionally right for the part. I think that fans of Twilight the book and the movie will be surprised by the Jacob Black that Taylor will bring to the screen in New Moon; and I’m looking forward to working with him and the rest of the cast in realizing the film.

very best

Chris Weitz”

Stephanie emphasizes that she was involved in this decision and is very happy with the choice. I agree and think this is good news – I always hate when actors are replaced by others in sequels and I’d feel bad for the guy if he lost his career-making role just before his character was supposed to get some serious screen time. Afterall, they chose him to play the role the first time around.

It was rumored for a while that Taylor would possibly be replaced by the physically bigger Michael Copon who, after reading up on him in IMDB, was a blue Power Ranger a few years back. That’s not relevant at all but I watched Power Rangers when it first came on in the nineties and thought that was funny…

New Moon is scheduled to come out this fall putting it just a year after Twilight’s release so this may be a bit of a rush job as it will only start filming in March. That being said, there’s not a crazy amount of CGI and post production work involved for this film compared to other highly anticipated movies this year.

This quick and busy scheduling has had some negative effect on Robert Pattinson who of course plays Edward Cullen. Yesterday it was announced that the now-high-in-demand actor has had to pull out of his role in the upcoming indie-film Parts Per Billion which stars Rosario Dawson and Dennis Hopper.

Robert’s agent spoke to MTV and stated:

“Unfortunately, the prep time and production schedule on ‘New Moon‘ haven’t left enough time for Robert to work on ‘Parts per Billion‘ in the first quarter of this year.”

That sucks for that film as simply having Pattinson involved would of made it a financial success with the flock of girls following his every move from other projects, interviews and TV appearances.

New Moon is scheduled to hit theaters November 20 2009.

Sources: StephanieMeyer.com, MTV