Twilight proved that girls like movies too. Sure there were romantic comedies geared at women, but the movie game's main job of building franchises used to break down firmly along gender lines, with production focusing on male-dominated movies that catered to teenage boys.
What is radical about the vampire romances, which wrap up their mega-grossing run this week with the release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, is that they forced studio executives to acknowledge that fanboys can be fangirls too.
"It's actually remarkable what the Twilight franchise was able to do for girl power," Jeff Bock, a box-office analyst with Exhibitor Relations, said.
"Before this people didn't know if girls could carry a franchise like Star Wars or Harry Potter. It really did change the paradigm and perceptions about what people will go see."
In the process, the Twilight films racked up more than $2.5 billion worldwide and upended the old order. Where once there were six major studios, now there are seven. The merger last January of Summit, the studio that took a bet on Twilight when no one else would, and Lionsgate, the one that followed its lead and picked up The Hunger Games, has created a new player in a crowded field. And the formula it followed could be embraced by other independent studios.
"It took away the preconceived notion that only major studios could create major franchises," a rival studio executive said.
To put it in a historical context: Universal may have been built on monster movies, Disney's foundation may rest on animation, but Lionsgate-Summit owes its powerhouse status to adaptations of young adult novels aimed at girls.
Twilight, like Jaws or Avatar, represents one of those rare pivot points in the American movie business. Unlike those films, however, it altered the course of the entertainment industry without eye-popping special effects, critical raves or an action-heavy storyline. Instead, it filled theatres by mixing together a potent cocktail of Victorian-era morality and teenage sexual awakening.
The storyline, a mushy love triangle drawn out over five languid instalments, is hardly revolutionary. Indeed, its sexual politics, with a high school age girl torn between a hunky werewolf and a brooding vampire, are decidedly retrograde. The whole film plays out as an extended metaphor for the dangers of premarital sex.
Based on a series of novels from Stephenie Meyer, Twilight was hardly the first movie series to find inspiration on the bestseller list.
Unlike Harry Potter, however, the Twilight novels were unapologetically told through a female lens.
From Brave to Snow White and the Huntsman, the ripples Twilight sent forth are still being felt today in a series of movies that focus on strong female protagonists. It's no mistake that 50 Shades of Grey, the sadomasochistic romance that sparked a bidding war in Hollywood recently, began life as a piece of Twilight fan fiction. Even The Hunger Games owes its greenlight and subsequent box office bonanza to Bella and Edward.
"Not in a million years would Hunger Games have been made were it not for Twilight," the executive said. "It was a paint by numbers job."
Like Twilight, these films are for women, starring women and marketed to women. If men get dragged along, great, but these movies can become blockbusters thanks to the double X-chromosome set. For example, when Breaking Dawn - Part 1 debuted last year to $138.1 million domestically, the audience was 80 per cent female.
Even films that have only faint traces of Twilight's DNA such as Bridesmaids prove that when studios ignore this demographic, they leave profits on the table.
Beyond the gender of its central character, Twilight altered the horror genre.
Prior to the books and films, analysts say that the idea of injecting romance into a gothic chiller would have been met with derision.
"They made the vampire story no longer just a horror story," Vincent Bruzzese, president of Ipsos's motion picture group, said. "It made it mainstream."
Twilight's legacy will be felt for years to come.
Lionsgate executives recently revealed that they had found a new series they believe can fill the hole left by Twilight. It's called Divergent, based on young adult novels about a teenage girl who rebels against her futuristic society.
