Facebook will be the exclusive platform for a series of short films made by women based on the Twilight series.

The campaign called “The Storytellers – New Creative Voices of The Twilight Saga” was announced Tuesday, and was developed in partnership with Vancouver- and Santa Barbara-based Lionsgate, non-profit Women in Film and Twilight Saga author Stephenie Meyer. The campaign will see aspiring female filmmakers develop and produce videos based on characters from the book and film franchise.

The campaign includes a multi-phase contest in which five people will be selected to produce and direct their projects with the help of a production advance and the mentorship of a group of advisers. The female panelists are Meyer; actresses Kristen Stewart, Kate Winslet, Octavia Spencer and Julie Bowen; Jennifer Lee, the writer and one of the directors of Disney’s blockbuster Frozen; Catherine Hardwicke, the director of Twilight; and Cathy Schulman, the president of Women In Film. The advisers will select the winning shorts that will premiere exclusively on Facebook next year.

Fans will then help select the grand-prize winner, who will receive a cash prize. Fans are asked to participate in the development of the short film through Facebook and crowdsourcing platform Tongal.

The project is one of the first content partnerships to be announced by Facebook since it began bolstering its video strategy earlier this year. In February, the social media network hired TV production veteran Sibyl Goldman as head of entertainment partnerships, but most of the company’s video announcements so far have been focused around its offering to advertisers and and the technology of the video player.

Women In Film is a non-profit dedicated to promoting equal opportunities in the entertainment industry, while Lionsgate is the studio behind the Twilight films.

– From StreamDaily