Fourth of July means no True Blood recap, but thankfully there's other crazy vampire news: the Vulture is reporting that Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner will receive an obscene $25 million for Breaking Dawn and Breaking Dawn 2: Demon Baby Boogaloo against a 7.5% cut of theatrical gross.

Remember when Jim Carrey earned a then-unheard of $20 million for The Cable Guy (a notorious flop deserving of a cult revival)? Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to think of a recent worthwhile Carrey vehicle (that will likely change if I Love You Philip Morris ever gets a release date in Canada and the U.S.), and you could be forgiven if your mind temporarily fritzed at the mention of his name. I can't decide what's more bizarre: how little obscene paychecks have gone up in the last 14 years or the possibility that one of these three is the next Jim Carrey. One of them is the way to making The Truman Show, another to The Number 23. Quick! Guess which is which!

When I first saw this news, my only thought was, "Motherfucker." It was more out of disappointment than any real annoyance. One of the difficulties of film criticism is reconciling the seventh art with the fact it's ultimately a money making venture. Poets don't write for the money.

So from a capitalist point of view, I can certainly understand why Summit would flip the bird to the mostly negative reviews of New Moon and make overtures to win back director Chris Weitz, he of the $480-million-worldwide-and-counting gross. Even without capitalism, I see no reason to argue against splitting up Breaking Dawn into two movies. That book is completely bananas, so scribe Melissa Rosenberg should do whatever she has to to make it work.

But what about David Slade, whose Eclipse is set to hit theatres in July? New Moon out-grossed Twilight. Who's to say that Eclipse won't out-gross New Moon? It is, after all, the best book in the series (IMHO, of course). If they give both Breaking Dawns (Breaking Dawn 2: Vampire Boogaloo) to Weitz, how will they reward Slade? Make him sparkle?