Stephanie Meyer’s cell phones are probably full of voicemails containing well-wishes tonight; the movie based on book two of her young adult vampire romance, New Moon, part of her four-book Twilight Saga series, shattered box office records this past weekend. The film’s domestic take was $140.7 million, but add to that total an additional $118.1 million from foreign markets and you get an opening three-day total of a whopping $258.8 million in early box office estimates.
The opening shatters all November opening weekend records, and ranks the film as the third-strongest opening weekend of all time, right behind The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 3. Considering that the original Twilight grossed a mere $180 million or so domestically in a 13-week run last year at this time, this strong opening almost guarantees New Moon will outpace Twilight by a dramatic degree.
Book 3 of the Twilight Saga, Eclipse, is scheduled to hit theatres already on June 30, 2010, a mere seven months from now; the impending Thanksgiving 2010 release of part one of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows scared Summit Entertainment away from maintaining its traditional Thanksgiving release schedule, but since no other major movie is currently scheduled for June 30, 2010, the scheduling of Eclipse for that weekend, along with the strong performance of New Moon, virtually guarantees that no serious challengers will emerge on the same weekend, as well as allowing plenty of spacing between the Twilight Saga and Harry Potter franchise releases, which tend to draw on the same core audience.
Sandra Bullock’s football dramedy, The Blind Side, also opened strong, though admittedly well behind New Moon; the flick drew $34.5 million in its opening bow to secure second place, well ahead of last week’s box office champion, 2012, which dropped to a distant third, drawing $26.5 million in its second week of release, a dramatic falloff of 60 percent from its first weekend. 2012 seems to be aching from poor word-of-mouth syndrome, with the typical line being, “Great special effects, stupid story.” Add in some “oh what b.s.” moments in the action sequences and you have a classic scenario for a fall from grace.
2012’s domestic total is a mere $108 million at this point, but has done dramatically better in foreign markets, where it has already grossed $341 million to date. That should help producers with the $200 million budget, but clearly the film will not do anywhere near as well domestically as Roland Emmerich’s other major releases, such as Independence Day and, more notably, a similarly-theme Day After Tomorrow.
In all, six movies this weekend grossed at least $10 million, and the top 12 grossing films combined for an impressive weekend box office total of $248.6 million, nearly twice that of last weekend’s take, and we’re still not to Thanksgiving weekend yet, traditionally the largest-grossing weekend of November.
Yet with the only remaining major releases being the videogame-inspired action flick, Ninja Assassin, and the John Travolta-Robin Williams buddy comedy Old Dogs, it’s unlikely the top three spots in the box office total will be threatened by any of the newcomers.
The next film with major expectations attached to it won’t hit theatres until December 18, when James Cameron’s Avatar is due to hit theatres.
