BOX OFFICE PROPHETS: TOP 12 INDUSTRY STORIES OF 2008, #6 TWILIGHT
In the modern box office era, there are a few special landmarks that provide delimiters for the greatness of a movie’s opening weekend. $30 million is good, but $50 million is great. The real lines of demarcation, however, are the $70 million and $100 million tiers. Only 34 movies have reached the former level, while only a dozen have managed the dramatic feat of the latter.Entering 2008, this title was completely unheralded by mainstream consumers, but it somehow managed a $69.6 million debut. That slots it neatly under all of the $70+ million debuts as the 35th largest opening of all time. What type of odds would Vegas have given you for that 12 months ago at this time?
How this happened is somewhat difficult to quantify. Certainly, the success of Stephenie Meyer’s novels is the primary force.
By the time of Twilight’s release into theaters, her four novels comprised the top four sellers on Amazon. For a period of several months, she toyed with the same accomplishment on USA Today’s best sellers list. Her work was neither a flash in the pan nor over-saturated. In point of fact, the Twilight phenomenon peaked at the perfect moment.
As recently as three months prior to the release of the movie, industry expectations for Twilight placed it squarely in the range of The Covenant. Some even argued that Twilight was so close in general premise to 2007’s Blood and Chocolate, a film that made a grand total of $3.5 million, that a Covenant-sized opening should be on the high side of expectations. Part of the rationale for this was that the distributor of Twilight, Summit Entertainment, had no experience with blockbusters. Instead, the fledgling studio was considered too green to handle a mega-opening. Such concerns proved utterly baseless.
Twilight was placed in the spot previously held by Potter, one of the friendliest on the calendar.
Twilight’s first Friday (including Thursday midnight sneaks) saw box office receipts of $35,978,348, making it the 29th largest single day in history.
Read complete article HERE
Wow, I didn’t know how poorly they expected Twilight to do opening weekend. It must have shocked the crap out of them. Whatever Summit did to advertise, it worked. But having such a loyal and devoted fan base for SM’s work didn’t hurt either. What do you think of the stats in this article? Are you surprised?
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I was VERY surprised to see that people thought, purely based on Summit, that the movie wouldn’t do well.
But, I’m not surprised it did. We, the WOMEN OF THE YEAR, made it SO!!!
Seriously, Blood and Chocolate, and the Covenant????? Well, I knew the success of Twilight the movie, shocked Hollywood but apparantly,
“shocked the crap out of them” is an understatement-Ha Ha! I knew the movie would do well. The built-in audience for the books was a major factor, yes, but the movie was actually good-therefore, it got the repeat business that means it will have legs. And, it’s doing great overseas too! Another reason for Twilight’s success-that 2 min. trailer ROCKED-anybody who saw that trailer would go see the movie. I was impressed just by the first 30 sec. trailer and bought the book after that. And Summit knew how to market this movie, using MTV to get the ball rolling was pure genius. And the tag line, “When you can live forever, what do you live for?” was also pure genius. Not to mention, Rob and Kristen’s chemistry is off the charts!
I don’t understand why the industry doesn’t realize this yet, but tween & teen girls rule the marketing world in the US. EVERYTHING that girls between 12 and 17 are into turns to gold.
Look at the facts: High School Musical, Hannah Montana, Jonas Brothers
Of course, Twilight was going to be a huge hit. The only question is why no one in the film industry thought it would.
Twilight even had the benefit of appealing to an older female audience. Maybe movie and TV producers will learn that not only teen boys flock to the cinema. And unlike the boys, the girls tend to see the movies they love more that once!
Viv- I can tell you why they underestimated the box office returns: because they all focus on who is who in Hollywood and Summit just isn’t a powerhouse. It’s so odd too since they do all these market surveys and screenings and such only to basically ignore the bottom line. Idiotic.
The ‘industry’ are all such a bunch of egomaniacs they can’t take their heads out of their own brilliant boardrooms to see what is going on in the outside world- such as the phenominal success of Stephenie Meyers books.
Now if Summit can just translate the success of Twilight into a $100+m budget we’ll actually get a film worth our time.
Older female here… I was clueless about the Twilight books myself, till the movie came out. (I have no teens in my house.) But long story short, since Nov. I’ve read ALL the books twice and saw the movie 7 times. There is just something very addicting and compelling (in spite of the mediocre writing) about this series… I’m not surprised that it went under the radar though.
I’m really hoping they do a good job with New Moon… although I can’t imagine liking it as much as Twilight if Edward is indeed missing from most of the movie.
Never underestimate the power of females with money to spend! It’s not just tweens and teens seeing this. Sure, there were teen girls at my showings(I’ve seen it 5 times) but there but also many females 18 plus, lots of women in their 20’s, 30’s 40’s and up. Rob had
*a lot* to do with that, lol. Hollywood has lost the ability to produce and distribute good movies that appeal to women that don’t involve shoot-em-up or stupid plots. The movie industry needs to sit up and take notice.
hi again i just wanted to say that im a little annoyed bout the fact that jacobs blacks character is still played by the same guy coz personally he cant act very well he is p[laying a main part this time and i dont really want to hav to watch him how did he even make it through casting but i may be surprised by wahat happens wen the movie comes uot i will propbally wish i never said anything bout this and will propbally hate myself 4 it its always good to put your opinion out there.
bye x0×0x0×0x0×0x0×0x0×0x0×0x0×0x0×0x0×0x0×0x0×0x0×0x
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Today is Saturday, January 17, 2009…went to see Twilight again (I’ve actually lost count on how many times I’ve gone to see it - teehee!!). But I was seriously surprised to see that the theater was FULL!!! AGAIN!!! It’s been out since November 21, 2008 and it is STILL filling the theaters! I wonder how long they run it?! AWESOME!!!