Script to Screen
BLOG POST
'New Moon' Continues to Shatter Box Office Records
In
PG-13-Rated, Box Office, Industry
"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" continues to break Hollywood box office records! After smashing the midnight box office record, formerly held by "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," "New Moon" has gone on to achieve the best opening day of all time with a staggering $72.7 million at the domestic box office.
The previous champ, 2008's "The Dark Knight" took in $67.2 million its first day of release, and went on to make $158.4 million in opening weekend.
"New Moon" was heavily targeted to females, but the box office numbers indicate that far more than just teenage girls turned out. Summit will release the demographic information tomorrow, but I imagine that a lot more boyfriends were dragged to this film than we might have otherwise thought.
It will be interesting to see how well "New Moon" performs over the rest of the weekend. Unlike most big films that often don't garner repeat viewings until subsequent release weeks, I expect that many "Twilight" fans will be seeing the movie at least twice this weekend.
The industry was expecting blowout numbers for the second film in the "Twilight" franchise but $72.7 million exceeded all expectations. To put things in perspective, the original "Twilight" took in $69.6 million its first weekend a year ago , a number "New Moon" has already eclipsed.
It's too early speculate on what impact this kind of success could have on other films targeted a young females, but it would be hard to argue that this is a group that movie studios need to look at catering too in a much stronger way.
What do you think of "New Moon's" success? Are you surprised that it beat "The Dark Knight's" first day numbers?
Source:Variety
