Ritisha Mishra with Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, whose film version will be released in India on November 20; (below) a still from the film. Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha

Better late than never. That must be the jubilant reaction of Indian fans of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire romance saga, with the movie based on the first book of the series, Twilight, releasing in the country on November 20, a year after its global premiere.

Meyer fans have a Calcutta girl to thank for the film reaching India. Ritisha Mishra, a Class VIII student of Modern High School, had started an online petition in October 2008, demanding Twilight be released in India.

The world premiere was slated for November 21, 2008. “Though release dates for various countries were posted on the Internet, India was missing,” says Ritisha. The campaign caught on with the book’s surging fan base. Last checked, www.petitiononline. com/twil12/petition had 1,707 signatories. Some threatened suicide or hijacking a plane “to go watch the movie in the US” while others questioned the business sense of ignoring a billion-strong market.

Ritisha’s petition, addressed to Meyer and the film’s makers, created such a ripple that PVR Pictures, which is bringing the film to India, is planning to invite her to Mumbai for the premiere.

For those out of the loop, the series, threatening to take away Harry Potter’s popularity wand, is an angsty teen romance about a handsome 17-year-old vampire and a normal teenage girl.

“The books were available earlier but around August last year, during the release of the fourth book — Breaking Dawn — the series became a rage in the US,” said Thomas Abraham, the managing director of Hachette India, the distributors of the books.

Drawing a parallel with the sales graph of the Harry Potter series, he said even J.K. Rowling’s books took off with the fourth novel. In India, the Twilight books saw renewed interest around the same time, selling 300,000 copies since August 2008.

Close on the heels of the release of Twilight, its sequel will also hit Indian theatres, on December 4. The global premiere of the sequel, New Moon, is on November 20, said Ranjan Singh, the head of marketing (worldwide) of PVR Pictures.

Twilight will be released in India with 50 prints at multiplexes, of which three to four prints will come to Calcutta. There will be 150-160 prints for New Moon.

“It feels really good that they listened to us,” Ritisha smiles, raring to meet the vampires on Day One.