The two-week $481 million worldwide gross of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” has put Summit Entertainment into the big leagues.

It has also created high class challenges for toppers Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger. As they come down from blockbuster euphoria, they are going to have to cut checks larger than most indie companies ever do if they move ahead with a plan to break Stephenie Meyer’s finale, “Breaking Dawn,” into two pictures. 

Sources said Summit has so far only gone as far as setting scribe Melissa Rosenberg--who wrote the first three films--to finish the series, but Summit has to clear several hurdles before telling Rosenberg if she should write one scripts or two.   

Among those hurdles is figuring out whether “New Moon” director Chris Weitz will respond favorably to overtures from the film company and the cast to return and shoot two more films, back to back. 

Summit execs would not comment, but multiple sources said that the film company wants to go the two-film route, which means re-opening negotiations and getting approval from the author. It also means making new deals with a principal cast that is only locked up for four films. If “Breaking Dawn” becomes two pictures, all of the key cast members will get fat raises, and the three principals—Rob Pattinson, Kristin Stewart and Taylor Lautner—could land eight-figure paydays. 

That is what happened the key cast members when Warner Bros. extended its blockbuster Harry Potter franchise by turning J.K. Rowling’s last book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” into two films that will be released in November, 2010 and July, 2011.The global success of the franchise made the paydays worthwhile.  

While the solution to most of Summit’s challenges will be determined by its willingness to cut large checks, the prospect of a Weitz return is more complicated.

After feeling violated by New Line’s decision to drastically alter his adaptation of “The Golden Compass,” Weitz said he felt redeemed and reinvigorated by the success of “New Moon.” Yet, just before the film’s release, Weitz was steadfast that he would next direct “The Gardener,” a comparatively tiny film scripted by Eric Eason, with Paul Witt and Christian McLaughlin producing. At the time, he said Summit was in discussions to fund that film.

Summit hasn’t closed a deal for “The Gardener,” probably because the film company wants Weitz to postpone it and work on “Breaking Dawn” instead. Could he possibly resist the chance to finish a global franchise he helped build, even though it will mean more time away from his family for a long shoot? That is the question he and his WME reps will weigh shortly. Though Summit hasn’t officially made Weitz an offer, sources said the job is his if he wants it. After bringing in “New Moon” at around $50 million and keeping the cast happy, he’s the logical choice.

David Slade directed the next installment in the series, “Eclipse,” which bows June 20, 2010.

In a deal that shows there is still some signs of life in the material market--especially if you've got a brand name author launching a franchise with reincarnation and young protagonists--New Regency and Peter Chernin won a bidding battle for screen rights to “My Name is Memory,” the first of a three-book series written by Ann Brashares. Deal was high six against seven figures.

Regency acquired the book as Universal chased for Paul and Chris Weitz’s Depth of Field and Warner Bros. pursued for producer Denise DiNovi, who produced the screen adaptation of the Brashares novel “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” for WB.

Sold on the basis of a first installment that will be published next June by the Penguin imprint Riverhead Books, the series begins as a college age couple meets, and a young man makes a startling confession. Turns out their souls have been reincarnated over hundreds of years, but these soul mates keep losing each other. While he remembers the details of their previous lives-- and his often exasperating attempts to connect with her romantically—she cannot recall the events of those past lives, nor the rivalry that exists with another soul that keeps getting in the way. The book has elements of “Twilight” and “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”

The acquisition becomes the first major book deal for Chernin since he established Chernin Entertainment as a Fox-based production entity. Chernin will produce with his production chief Dylan Clark. New Regency got an early look at the book through its Gotham-based exec Michelle Kroes.

New Regency has been aggressively acquiring and Chernin is becoming a busy buyer too as he establishes his company. Chernin most recently was in the center of a Fox acquisition of an untitled pitch by Adam Cooper & Bill Collage (“Moby Dick”) that re-telld the tale of Moses and his exploits as detailed in the Book of Exodus.

Chernin also boarded several projects already at Fox, including the John D. MacDonald novel adaptation “the Deep Blue Goodbye,” which is being scripted by Dana Stevens for Leonardo DiCaprio to play Travis McGee. Chernin is producing with Appian Way and Amy Robinson.

WME brokered the book deal.

In one of the more unusual films being sold at AFM, former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi stars in the docu feature “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” The film bears the same title as a book Bugliosi wrote, arguing that the former president should stand criminal trial on the allegation he led the country to  invade Iraq using faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that the White House knew was false. 

Bugliosi—most famous for convicting Charles Manson and his clan and turning that experience into the book “Helter Skelter”—got the cold shoulder from media when the book was published. His longtime agent, Peter Miller, thinks the global dislike for Bush and the war might lead to a better reception for the docu in theaters outside the U.S. Miller said this after entering negotiations with a publisher he wouldn’t name to get the book published in 22 Arab countries. The book, which became a bestseller despite media snubs, was also published in Germany, Korea, England, Australia and Canada.

In the film, Bugliosi bristles with anger and blames Bush--whom he calls a "draft dodging son of privilege"--for the death and destruction of a war sold to Congress by painting Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat. Bugliosi said that was done by using information that U.S. intelligence agencies discounted as likely false. Bugliosi then presents a blueprint and legal precedent for a prosecution. He's no crackpot: as prosecutor, he won convictions in all but one of 106 cases, he's written numerous bestselling true-crime books, and his 1612-page JFK assassination investigation, “Reclaiming History,” is getting miniseries treatment from HBO and Playtone. 

Still, the book wasn’t reviewed by a major newspaper when it was published, and Bugliosi was treated as a Don Quixote figure on the few interview shows that would have him. It would be easy to regard his campaign as a publicity stunt, but Miller said he hasn’t made a dime on the project, and Bugliosi said he is risking his legacy on it.   

Said Bugliosi: “How is it possible for Bush to take the country to war under false pretenses, resulting in cataclysmic consequences, and America does absolutely nothing about it, just gives Bush a free pass? No one even wants to talk about it. The mainstream media blacked me out for the first time in my career. I could not get on any national network and it got so bad that ABC Radio refused to take money from the publisher for a radio spot. We couldn’t raise a dime for this documentary in America.”

The notion of putting on trial a former president for actions taken while in the White House seems somehow unfathomable. Attorney Alan Dershowitz, after lauding Bugliosi’s record, says in the docu that he doubts the case will see the inside of a courtroom. 

Bugliosi understands the skepticism, but said he is too incensed by the death of over 4000 U.S. soldiers and significantly more Iraqi citizens, to let this go. He said he is determined to find a prosecutor to take the case, and feels the book and movie will help. There is a wide pool of potential prosecutors, as Bugliosi said that jurisdiction is possible in any state that is home to a soldier who was killed in Iraq.

“I’m willing to help any prosecutor, from serving as consultant up to being appointed special prosecutor,” Bugliosi said. “I have to measure my words here but I am making progress toward that goal and I’m not giving up. I may not succeed but I won’t be satisfied until I see Bush in an American courtroom.” 

Pic’s financier Jim Shaban, a Canadian-born exhibition exec who’s now building a production facility in Michigan, said he has assured Bugliosi the film will get theatrical distribution in the U.S. and Canada. That will possibly come through Independentbooking.net, a service run by ex-Cineplex Odeon exec Eric Ball. Ball said they will likely organize screenings for buyers, the goal being to open the film in February or March.

Exactly 30 years to the day that a group of militant students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and began a 444-day hostage crisis that doomed the administration of president Jimmy Carter, HBO Films has made a deal to turn the ordeal into a film.

HBO has acquired “Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis, The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam,” the book by “Black Hawk Down” author Mark Bowden.

Andrea Berloff, who scripted the Oliver Stone-directed “World Trade Center,” will adapt.

William Horberg will be executive producer.

Some 66 Americans were taken hostage on November 4, 1979 and weren’t freed until January, 1981. An event that began as an expression of student outrage over the U.S. decision to allow the ousted Shah of Iran into the country for medical treatment fueled the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and his hard-line cronies.

A rescue attempt ended disastrously, and the prolonged stalemate haunted the administration of President Jimmy Carter. As much as the crisis fueled a rise in fundamentalist Islam in Iran, it boosted the rise of the Conservative Republican Ronald Reagan, who defeated Carter in the election, promptly unfroze $8 billion in Iranian assets and took the bows when the hostages were freed. 

The Bowden book was first optioned in 2003 by Paramount for producer Scott Rudin, with the studio making a seven-figure commitment when Bowden had only written a two-page proposal.

Horberg, a producer of “The Kite Runner,” was the catalyst for the project’s resurgence.

“I was able to visit Tehran as part of the Academy delegation’s international outreach committed,” Horberg said. “I spent ten days there, screening films and meeting Iranian filmmakers. A couple of weeks after I was back and lunching with ICM agent Ron Bernstein and telling him about the trip, he said the rights to the Bowden book were free and clear. Mark writes these historically significant books that read like page-turners, and this 700-page yarn grips you from the moment those students climb over the gates. It is one of the most important defining political events of the last 40 years, the introduction of radical Islam to most people, and HBO seemed the only place to tackle this kind of epic political subject matter. And it’s still relevant.”

While TV series packages are getting harder to come by these days, ICM has a pretty good one to show studios and networks.

James Belushi has agreed to team with Diane English and Barry Levinson for an hourlong TV drama that will cast him as a defense attorney character modeled after the famed lawyer and TV commentator Mickey Sherman.

Belushi is coming off a long run in the ABC sitcom “According to Jim.“

Sherman wrote the memoir “How Can You Defend Those People?,” and the idea is for Belushi to play a likable prosecutor who defends the guilty and innocent with equal vigor.

English, the “Murphy Brown” vet returns to TV after writing and directed the Warner Bros. remake “The Women.” As for Levinson, Showtime this week premiered his docu “PoliWood,” about the convergence of celebs on the Democratic and Republican national conventions and its impact on the presidential campaign of 2008. Levinson, who featured Sherman in a cameo of his film “Man of the Year,” just directed for HBO the Jack Kevorkian pic “You Don’t Know Jack,” which stars Al Pacino as the controversial death dealer.

Belushi is repped by ICM and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

Columbia Pictures and director Michael Mann will team to tell the story of renowned war photographer Robert Capa, using the snapshot of a torrid two-year romance with Gerda Taro during the Spanish Civil War.

The studio has acquired “Waiting for Robert Capa,” a Spanish language novel by Susana Fortes, and set Jez Butterworth to adapt it.

Mann will produce through his Forward Pass banner. He plans to direct the film.

The story begins in Paris in 1935, where Capa, a refugee from Fascist Hungary, met another aspiring photographer in Taro, a refugee from Nazi Germany. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War one year later started Capa’s rise to renown as a top war photographer, and established Taro as the first frontline female battle photographer. She was killed in the battle of Brunete in 1937.

Mann has long wanted to make a film about Capa, and found his way in through the Fortes novel. Capa was shattered by Taro’s death, and though he’d later romance the likes of Ingrid Bergman, Capa never married. When Capa was blown up by a land mine during the French Indochina War, the only photo found in his wallet was of Taro. 

Capa, who fascinated Hollywood while he was alive, has also intrigued filmmakers since his death. Several attempts have been made to turn his outsized life into a film, but nobody has yet been able to lick problems like cost. Mann, who has made some gorgeous visual dramas at studio-sized budgets, wants his Capa picture to be a departure. He intends to make a gritty version at a low budget. The period battlefield setting will make that a challenge. 

Interest in the Capa/Taro romance has surged since the discovery of more than 4000 photos taken mostly by them during the Spanish Civil War. The images will be the subject of a show to be held at the Institute of Contemporary Photography next year.

Butterworth most recently wrote the play, “Jerusalem,” and teamed with brother John-Henry Butterworth on a James Brown biopic and “Fair Game,” the adaptation of the Valerie Plame memoir which Doug Liman just directed for River Road. Naomi Watts and Sean Penn starred in the film.

Temple Hill Entertainment has acquired screen rights to “LA Candy,” the bestselling debut novel by Lauren Conrad, ex-star of reality series “The Hills” and “Laguna Beach.”

Temple Hill partners Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey will produce. Conrad will be executive producer through her Blue Eyed Girl Productions banner. The book was published in June by Harper Collins and has been on the bestseller lists of The New York Times for 14 weeks.

It amounts to a teaming between the exec producers of "Twilight" and one of the leading lights of youth-geared reality shows. Informed by Conrad’s experiences, “LA Candy” tells the story of a 19-year old who moves to Hollywood, quickly finds fame as a reality series star, and then has to deal with the ramifications of living a surreal fishbowl life. Conrad plans to write two more books on the reality travails of protagonist Jane Roberts.

“Lauren, who became an icon in that reality show world, came to us with a structure of how to tell the story in an interesting fashion, that was separate and apart from the book,” Bowen said. “We loved her take. Her book is an honest portrayal of what it must be like to set out to be normal, then sign on to become famous and eventually realize, wow, this isn’t at all what I’d planned for myself.”

Bowen said they will set a writer before looking for a studio/financier for the project, which was sold by UTA. Conrad will be involved in shaping the direction of the script.

Conrad’s film deal comes the same week she launched a line of clothing that is being sold exclusively at Kohl’s.

Temple Hill is exec producer of the “Twilight” sequels “New Moon” and “Eclipse,” and is producing the Screen Gems drama “Dear John,” which stars Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum, directed by Lasse Hallstrom.

Peter Chernin’s transition from News Corp. exec to producer at 20th Century Fox is just getting underway, and he has come aboard several film projects being developed by the studio.

The flashiest of the bunch is “The Deep Blue Goodbye,” an adaptation of the John D. MacDonald mystery novel series that has Leonardo DiCaprio attached to star.

Chernin joins Appian Way’s DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson-Killoran as producers on a project that has a strong draft by Dana Stevens (“For Love of the Game”) that is drawing interest from directors. Amy Robinson is also involved in a producing capacity. 

DiCaprio is in line to play Travis McGee, a self-described beach bum who lives aboard the 52-foot houseboat The Busted Flush, and alleviates his cash flow problems by hiring on as a “salvage consultant.” He recovers property for clients, taking a hefty percentage and getting into a lot of danger and romance in sun-drenched Florida. “The Deep Blue Goodbye,” the first of a 21 volume bestselling series, was originally published in 1964.

Chernin, who in June named veteran Universal Pictures production exec Dylan Clark to run his film division, is expected to emerge as an aggressive buyer for material to feed both his film and TV shingles. Clark, who signed when he had six months left on his U contract, doesn’t officially start until October.

Aside from “Deep Blue Goodbye,” Chernin is coming aboard several other percolating Fox projects. 

They include “Queen & Country,” an adaptation of the Greg Rucka-created Oni Press comic book about a female agent hunted after she carries out a high-level assassination in Eastern Europe. Ryan Condal is writing the script. Jenno Topping was already aboard as producer.

Chernin has also joined as producer on “Man and Wife,” an Alan McElroy action-thriller spec about a hit man who pretends to be an average husband, and a wife who learns to love him in a totally unexpected way. Ralph Winter came attached to produce when the project was acquired in 2008.

Execs transitioning to producers often get started by coming aboard projects they shepherded or liked. Observers said that Chernin’s deal is so strong—he has two “put pictures” per year for the next six years—that he can be a powerful ally in getting pictures made at a time when mounting mid-budget dramas is more difficult than ever.

Producers Nick Wechsler, Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz have used their own money to acquire screen rights to “The Host,” the first adult novel written by Stephenie Meyer, author of the “Twilight” series. 

Andrew Niccol will write the script and direct.

Meyer’s novel is a love story set in the near future on Earth, which has been assimilated by an alien species that call themselves “Souls.” They are benevolent parasites that subsume the conscious of humans and take possession of their bodies. One such soul, The Wanderer (so named because she has wandered among so many different worlds) is fused with a dying human named Melanie Stryder, in an attempt to locate the last pocket of surviving humans on Earth. The Wanderer cannot subsume the forceful Melanie, and they battle for the girl’s memories and her spirit.

Wechsler and the Schwartz’ are separately teamed on “The Road,” the John Hillcoat-directed adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel that will be released November 25 by The Weinstein Company. They are also producing the Paul Schrader-scripted “The Dying of the Light,” and an adaptation of the Pete Takada book “An Eye at the Top of the World,” which is being adapted by Ryne Douglas Pearson.

They will develop the project independently.

The trio wanted to make a science fiction film and fixed on “The Host.” In addition to writing four volumes of the “Twilight” series, Meyer has been heavily involved in the blockbuster screen transfers, and she spurned several overtures for “The Host.” The producers continued lobbying the author and her reps at UTA and The Writers House with a significant offer, a strong vision for the project, and a collaborative spirit. Meyer eventually said yes.

In fact, Niccol first came under consideration after Wechsler and the Schwartz’ asked Meyer her favorite science fiction films, and “Gattaca” and “The Truman Show” were in her top five. Niccol wrote and directed “Gattaca” and scripted the Peter Weir-directed “The Truman Show.”

Niccol read the book, met the producers and author, and the New Zealand-born writer/director sparked to the assignment. 

“We wanted Stephenie to be involved in the adaptation, and have her endorse and be part of the creative decisions,” Wechsler said. “`Twilight’ has proven she more more about what works than most.”

Summit releases the second installment of Meyers’s vampire series, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” on November 20.

Niccol is repped by CAA.

DreamWorks has set Al Gough and Miles Millar to adapt “I Am Number 4,” the novel co-written by “A Million Little Pieces” author James Frey and Jobie Hughes.

DreamWorks bought the title, the first in a six-book series, as a producing vehicle for “Transformers” director Michael Bay. Bay might also direct the picture.

Chris Bender and JC Spink of BenderSpink will be executive producers.

HarperCollins Children’s Books is publishing the book, about a group of nine aliens whose home planet is destroyed. They escape to Earth disguised as teenagers, and the title character discovers he and the others are still being hunted by the enemy that destroyed their planet.

Gough and Millar created “Smallville” and their scripting credits include “Spider-Man 2” and “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.” They most recently produced “Hanna Montana: The Movie” and are producing “Quatermain” for DreamWorks.

CAA reps the scribes.