Today’s news that Summit Entertainment has already chosen a release date for Eclipse, the third entry in theTwilight series, suggests the studio is in a hurry. With New Moon, the second entry in the series, currently in a production surge under the direction of Chris Weitz for a November 20 release date, Summit’s latest decision raises the bar even higher, by placing Eclipse right in the heat of summer 2010’s blockbuster season. What’s the rush?

Former New Line marketing chief Russell Schwartz, whose resume includes a steadily successful franchise about hobbits and rings, offers one piece of advice for the newbies at Summit: Slow down.

“They think the audience is going to grow up and get too old [for the movies] by the time two or three comes out,” Schwartz tells me. “But I honestly don’t believe it’s that crucial to have it out ever year, like Saw. I wish they would take more time, but I’m not making decisions for them.”

Nevertheless, Schwartz knows a thing or two about the fledgling company’s current state. Having worked at New Line throughout the successful run of The Lord of the Rings series, he recognizes the difficulty of handling a massive franchise while simultaneously trying to maintain the studio’s specific brand identity with different releases. “You can’t chase a franchise, that’s for sure,” he says. “It’s one thing to exploit it and to finish its run, but [Summit] is not in that high stakes, big budget business. They’re more competitive with Lionsgate than they are with major studios.”

Which, of course, explains the recent rumors that Lionsgate sought to buy out its nascent competitor. Whether or not such a deal was ever seriously considered, Lionsgate’s uneven track record in recent years — first it was a torture porn factory, now it’s ground zero of Tyler Perryville — may indicate to Summit that it shouldn’t make too much of a good thing. “If you are going to make all young girl movies, Twilight being a big one, you become the young, tween studio,” Schwartz says. “But you can’t be in that business seriously as a steady diet. When you’re not in the tentpole business, the key thing is to diversify.”

On that front, at least, the company appears to have its bases covered. In addition to New Moon, Summit’s 2009 slate contains an odd blend of star-driven material and smaller, low budget projects. A recent series of previews shown at New York Comic Con showcased the variety: First, an exasperated Nicolas Cage made desperate attempts to thwart natural catastrophes predicted by a series of ominous numbers in director Alex Proyas’s March release Knowing; then, Jeremy Renner engaged in a detailed attempt to defuse a car bomb in Kathryn Bigelow’s quietly gripping The Hurt Locker; finally, an animated adolescent went swooping through the clouds in a CGI adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy. It almost felt like the projectionist grabbed a few reels at random on the way out the door.

During its nearly invincible run with the LOTR movies, New Line had its fair share of diverse content, from dramas aimed at older demographics like the Nicholas Sparks adaptation The Notebook, to auteur-driven works such as David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. Both did strong business on a quantitatively separate scale from LOTR. New Line also had a few comedic successes — most notably, Wedding Crashers in 2005. Summit has yet to succeed on that front, having released the dud Sex Drive last year. For now, however, that’s a failure the studio can handle. “There was always one movie that took care of the year,” Schwartz recalls of his New Line days. “Then, you sort of bubbled through the rest of the year, and had some ups and downs and singles and doubles and strikeouts.”

Schwartz thinks The Hurt Locker, which Summit purchased at the Toronto Film Festival and plans to release at the end of the summer, was a good buy for the company (assuming it ever releases the movie). Referring to the difficulties he endured with the release of the dramatically overwrought Rendition in 2007, he urges the studio to avoid the “Iraq war” label. “It doesn’t seem like it’s got any kind of political attitude about it, so that’s how you sell it,” he advises. “I don’t think the Iraq thing means that much anymore, honestly. To me, it seems like a movie you could play right against that 17-24-year-old male forum.”

How much mature, intellectual movies like The Hurt Locker can fill the voids between Twilight movies remains to be seen. A Summit representative declined to comment for this story, perhaps because they’re still not quite sure what to say. Speaking to The New York Times during the wave of optimism on the eve of Twilight’s theatrical premiere, Summit co-chairman and CEO Robert G. Friedman said the company would probably use the franchise’s success to create a brand, which he chose to define as “commercial.” His colleague, Summit president Patrick Wachsberger, added that Twilight’s success “makes it much easier for agencies to let their big stars come do a movie with us.”

So far, the big stars and commercial movies haven’t become Summit’s exclusive route — but it’s early yet. “What a franchise gives you is terrific credibility in Hollywood,” Schwartz says, adding that the relatively low budget approach to the first Twilight movie, and the subsequent monetary advantages Summit has achieved as a result, should motivate other mini-studios to follow suit. “Everybody thinks they can do it now,” he says. “For the independent film business in general, that is a fantastic accomplishment, and I think it has a very big echo effect.”

While the Twilight gears keep turning, Schwartz warns Summit not to assume guaranteed successes with its current pipeline. “The biggest problem that any of these companies face is a tendency to become complacent, particularly as an independent,” he says. “You have to be very careful about that.” Either way, the Moon will rise, but we all know how vampires fare in the sunlight.