"Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke's adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's vampire-romance novel, easily won the weekend box office with a $70.6 mil debut gross, according to Sunday's estimates. Fellow freshman flick Bolt and hefty holdover Quantum of Solace, meanwhile, trailed far behind.
That huge premiere number represents achievements on many levels for Twilight. It's the top debut ever for a film directed by one woman (Mimi Leder's Deep Impact banked $41.2 mil on its initial weekend 10 years ago). It's the 29th best first-weekend bow of all time (falling just shy of 300's $70.9 mil and coming in just ahead of Transformers' $70.5 mil). It's by far the biggest opening yet for fledgling studio Summit, whose previous best bow was Never Back Down's $8.6 mil back in March. It stands as the fourth biggest premiere of the year -- better than Quantum of Solace's $67.5 mil opening, better than WALL-E's $63.1 mil, better than Hancock's $62.6 mil, to name a few. Last, but almost certainly not least, it's nearly exactly what I predicted (hooray, me!).
So it's no surprise that the studio already announced a sequel, New Moon. But the question for now, of course, is where Twilight, which averaged a bloody good $20,636 in 3,419 theaters, goes from here? Not surprisingly, girls and women comprised a whopping 75 percent of the film's audience, but will they continue to pack theaters as the weeks go on? In the short term: yes. According to studio data, ticket buyers gave the movie a nice A- grade, signaling the spread of positive word of mouth as we head into Thanksgiving. Certainly, there will be some competition for this core crowd from Australia and Four Christmases next week, but you can also assume that Twilight will be able to build on its super-smashing start."
That huge premiere number represents achievements on many levels for Twilight. It's the top debut ever for a film directed by one woman (Mimi Leder's Deep Impact banked $41.2 mil on its initial weekend 10 years ago). It's the 29th best first-weekend bow of all time (falling just shy of 300's $70.9 mil and coming in just ahead of Transformers' $70.5 mil). It's by far the biggest opening yet for fledgling studio Summit, whose previous best bow was Never Back Down's $8.6 mil back in March. It stands as the fourth biggest premiere of the year -- better than Quantum of Solace's $67.5 mil opening, better than WALL-E's $63.1 mil, better than Hancock's $62.6 mil, to name a few. Last, but almost certainly not least, it's nearly exactly what I predicted (hooray, me!).
So it's no surprise that the studio already announced a sequel, New Moon. But the question for now, of course, is where Twilight, which averaged a bloody good $20,636 in 3,419 theaters, goes from here? Not surprisingly, girls and women comprised a whopping 75 percent of the film's audience, but will they continue to pack theaters as the weeks go on? In the short term: yes. According to studio data, ticket buyers gave the movie a nice A- grade, signaling the spread of positive word of mouth as we head into Thanksgiving. Certainly, there will be some competition for this core crowd from Australia and Four Christmases next week, but you can also assume that Twilight will be able to build on its super-smashing start."
**To see the complete article from EW.com, click here.
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1 comment:
I'm so glad it did so well on its debut, though I'm not surprised.
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