Summit Entertainment has revealed today that The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 will open in theaters on November 16, 2012, a year after its Part 1 predecessor.

Following the lead of the Harry Potter film franchise, the studio confirmed back in June that the big-screen adaptation of Stephenie Meyer‘s final Twilight Saga novel would be broken up into two films, both of which will be directed by Bill Condon.

Last month, it was announced that filming would begin on the final movies this Fall, with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 to be released in theaters on November 18, 2011. Filming will take place in both Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the United States and Vancouver, BC in Canada [Read “˜Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn’ Filming Locations & Start Date].

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Directed by David Slade
Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
Rated PG-13
Release date: June 30, 2010

Hailing The Twilight Saga: Eclipse the best of the series isn’t the ringing endorsement it sounds. Hearing that won’t change the minds of any non-believers and if you are already among the following, you aren’t one that needs converting. It most certainly is, but it’s a pretty relative statement.

I have always taken the stance of non-participation in the popular recreation of Twilight bashing. Attacking the mob mentality of these zealots is a bandwagon that would be easy to jump on, but Lord knows I liked some awful movies when I was younger, so I’ve always given the series a fair shake. They haven’t been great, in fact they have been downright ugly at times, but I can see why so many fans like them. A little.

Eclipse starts off pretty promising. Dark and raining in Seattle, a young man is being chased and hunted by something. This is the first time in this series I got the sense that vampires are dangerous and anything but sparkly and cuddly. It turns out to be Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard), who is still hellbent on exacting revenge on Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) for killing her boyfriend James in the first film. Her plan is to find and kill Bella (Kristen Stewart), presumably so Edward can feel what she felt when her boyfriend died. The young man ends up being a college student from Forks, Riley Biers (Xavier Samuel), who is turned and tricked by Victoria into helping her assemble an army of newborn vampires to help take down Bella and the Cullen vampire clan.

What if I told you that the world’s hands-down most sparkly vampire, Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward Cullen in The Twilight Saga, was actually related to the real Dracula, Vlad the Impaler?

Well, that’s precisely what genealogy experts from Ancestry.com discovered in a recent test of the actor’s family tree. You see, Pattinson is actually related to the British royal family, and is in fact distant cousins to Prince William and Prince Harry. This now connects Transylvania’s Vlad the Impaler (real name Vlad Tepes), as a distant uncle to all of them.

If you’ve been following the progress of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn at all, you know it’s been long-expected and long-assumed that the final chapter to the film series would be split into two films.

The move was expected as it would be in an attempt to cover as much of the story’s details as possible and of course to pile as much cash into the bank as they possibly could before the franchise’s end.

In a press release put out by Summit Entertainment today, it was finally made official: Breaking Dawn will indeed be a two-part movie. The film will go into production some time this fall, and the first of these two movies will be released in November of 2011.

Recently it was reported that because Summit Entertainment had not decided earlier that their final movie in the Twilight franchise, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, would be split into two movies and because their actors had become stars, talents like Ashley Greene and Kellan Lutz were holding out in hopes of pulling in a much bigger payday (Read: Will ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn’ Re-Cast Cullen Kids Ashley Greene & Kellan Lutz?). It was also for this reason that the assumed-two-part film had not been made “official” yet, even though there was little doubt that all cast members would eventually rejoin the three main stars.

In a press release put out by Summit, the studio announced the return of the entire Cullen family, including Greene, Lutz, Peter Facinelli, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, and Elizabeth Reaser. The release pointed out that the actors have joined Billy Burke, who plays Charlie Swan. Three new posters were also released for the next film in the series, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, one of which can seen to the right.