She turned around to grab a bottle of “Mafia Mamma” branded rosé from a snazzy gift basket perched behind her. “They’ve got a lot of fun trailers and they’ve got the social campaign going.” “Bleecker Street is really actually putting this in 2,000 theaters, and they’re making some advertising noise,” she said. How to Make a Modern Period Piece for $5 Million: Behind the Scenes of ‘BlackBerry’īut she’s pretty excited about “Mafia Mamma” and the support its distributor has already heaped on it. The numbers went down last year, in the latest report, backwards, so even if we gain a little bit in films, then it goes back. “We still need that light to get shined a little brighter and put a little bit more attention on women’s films,” Hardwicke said during a recent Zoom interview with IndieWire. Since the breakout success of both Sundance award-winner “Thirteen” and the first “Twilight” film (a massive smash by any metric), Hardwicke has continued to evolve, even in an industry not always welcoming to women with big dreams. As she readies to debut her latest, the Toni Collette-starring fish-out-of-water comedy “ Mafia Mamma,” Hardwicke is still pushing forward, even when it’s not easy. From “Thirteen” to “ Twilight,” “Red Riding Hood” to “The Nativity Story,” Hardwicke is constantly shifting gears, changing tones, mixing it up. “You’ve never seen Catherine Hardwicke like this before” might as well be emblazoned on any and all marketing materials for the director’s diverse projects.

Twilight rising sun