Saturday Update
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The Twilight Saga: New Moon
smashed the opening day box office record on Friday with a stunning $72.7M
in ticket sales, according to estimates released by Summit. The figure
includes $26.3M in post-midnight sales on late Thursday night, also a new
industry high. The old records were held by The
Dark Knight for opening day with $67.2M and Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for the post-midnights with
$22.2M.
The turnout was astounding for New Moon especially considering how the audience was mostly female with males contributing very little to the pot. Playing in 4,024 theaters, the vampire sequel averaged a sensational $18,067 in just its first day of release. The Bella Swan saga is expected to be very front-loaded as its predecessor was one year ago this weekend. The first Twilight bowed to $36M on Friday, plunged 41% to $21.3M on Saturday and then fell another 42% on Sunday to $12.4M for a $69.6M opening weekend. Should New Moon experience declines of somewhat higher rates, it would soar to $130-140M by the end of the weekend giving it a shot at being one of the top three opening weekends of all-time. Sandra Bullock enjoyed a solid debut with her pigskin drama The Blind Side which bowed to an estimated $11M on Friday, its first day of release. The Warner Bros. pic may have tapped into adult women sold out of Twilight. Plus football movies generally do well anyway. A weekend gross of $30-33M seems likely putting it in good shape going into the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Sony's doomsday thriller 2012 fell to an estimated $8M on Friday and could reach $26-28M for the frame. A Christmas Carol took in an estimated $3.5M and is heading for $13-15M over three days for Disney. Lionsgate expanded Precious nationwide into 629 locations and grossed an estimated $3.6M. A weekend take of about $11M is likely. The animated pic Planet 51 did not fare well pulling in an estimated $3M for Sony for what should be a weekend tally of only $10-12M. Led by Twilight, the box office is on fire this weekend soaring to record heights with the top ten alone likely to haul in north of $230M. Get earlier box office updates and analysis by following BoxOfficeGuru.com on Twitter. Check the UPDATED charts for the Top All-Time Opening Days and Top All-Time Opening Weekends. For NEW reviews of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Planet 51, 2012 and Fantastic Mr. Fox visit The Chief Report. Check back on Sunday for the complete weekend box office report. |
Last Updated: November 21, 2009 at 12:00PM ET
Written by Gitesh Pandya