Opens To $72.7M Friday & $43M Saturday; 'Twilight' Sequel Tracking $140M Weekend - All-Time 3rd Biggest...
The Twilight Saga franchise moviemaker Summit Entertainment won't report official North American, international and worldwide totals until Sunday. But the sequel's vampires and werewolves shattered the All-Time 3rd Biggest Opening Weekend record of $135.6M (see below).
Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight Saga" novels -- New Moon is the second in the series -- are now proving as much of a phenomenon as comic books for source material at the box office. New Moon also has shown that when the female audience supports a film, it can absolutely dominate box office. The pic is confirmed to have debuted to $72.7 million Friday from 4,024 North American theaters. This shattered both previous All-Time Friday and Single Day records of $67 million set by 2008's The Dark Knight. Friday's total included New Moon's $26.27M in 12:01AM screenings from 3,514 theaters. That set a new midnight opening record, smashing The Dark Knight's $18.4M set on July 18, 2008, and Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince's $22.2M set on July 15, 2009.
Saturday's take looks down an expected -40% for $43M with another -40% drop anticipated on Sunday. Clearly the "A-" CinemaScore which the pic scored helped mitigate. That number won't break the all-time opening weekend record set by The Dark Knight of $158.4M in 2008 or by Spider-Man 3 of $151.M in 2007. But it does jump into the No. 3 spot previously held by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest with $135.6M in 2006. But all three of those movies were released in the summer, unlike New Moon which also scored the biggest Non-Summer Friday-Saturday-Sunday (3-Day) Weekend opening ever. (Note that none of these numbers have been adjusted for inflation or higher ticket costs or theater counts.) Amazing, especially since Hollywood thought New Moon might, repeat might, do Iron Man numbers of around $100M.
New Moon also smashed the $36M earned by Twilight on its first Friday exactly a year ago. (Thursday night, Summit re-issued Twilight in 2,057 theaters and took in $1.3M.) Twilight’s opening weekend total was $69.7M.
Meanwhile, Fandango tells me that New Moon was trending to sell more than 10 tickets per second on the site throughout the course of Friday. Both Fandango and MovieTickets.com said New Moon became No. 1 on their list of the Top 10 Advance Ticket Sellers of All Time (unseating the Batman, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings franchises). Although Summit switched up directors, from Catherine Hardwicke to Chris Weitz, it kept screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and of course the principal cast: heartthrobs Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, and Kristin Stewart. And, always, the filmmakers pandered to the fans inbetween the time that Twilight left theaters and New Moon began filming. When the New Moon trailer was released online, it scored 5.8 million views in the first 24 hours, demonstrating the fans' pent-up demand. Right before the latest in the franchise was released, Summit marketed New Moon with a 15-city cast tour in shopping malls and NYC's Times Square. On Thursday and Friday, anecdotal reports were streaming in to me about gargantuan lines at United States and Canada theaters crowded with female tweens, teens, their mothers, and generally women over the age of 25. Moviegoers are also said to include boys and men, but to a much lesser extent. The Twi-Hards were playing Twilight trivia games, wearing Twilight T-shirts, reading Twilight Saga novels, and even doing homework while on line in their Team Edward or Team Jacob sweatshirts and movie costumes.
Internationally, New Moon will be in 75 territories total, rolling out from Wednesday through Sunday in 25 markets and maxing out by mid-December. This is said to be the tightest independent worldwide release ever. It's rolled out overseas to a big start, opening Wednesday in France to $4.4 million, which was nearly four times the $1.2 million earned there on the first day of Twilight.
Here are the rest of the box office numbers:
1. "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" ($72.7 million)
2. "The Blind Side" ($10.9 million)
3. "2012" ($8.1 million)
4. "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" ($3.6 million)
5. "Planet 51" ($3.2 million)
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