DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD DAILY: ‘NEW MOON’ SHREDS MOVIE RECORDS!
Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily is reporting incredible breaking news for the opening day numbers at New Moon. What’s even more exciting are the numbers that New Moon could reach over the entire weekend.
“The night definitely belongs to Twilight.” This is what a Hollywood insider told me early this morning after NEW MOON’s late Friday night numbers came in. Summit Entertainment is now saying it debuted to $72.7 million from 4,024 North American theaters. This shatters both previous All-Time Friday and Single Day records of $67 million set by 2008′s The Dark Knight. So Batman was beaten by the Twilight sequel’s vampires and werewolves which won’t sit well with the superhero-loyal moviegoing community. But Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight Saga” novels — New Moon is the second in the series — are now proving as much of a phenomenon as comic books for source material at the box office. And New Moon once again has shown that when the female audience supports a film, it can absolutely dominate box office. Friday’s total included New Moon’s $26.27M in 12:01AM screenings from 3,514 theaters. That set a new midnight opening record, smashing The Dark Knight’s $18.4M set on July 18, 2008, and Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince’s $22.2M set on July 15, 2009.My insiders are tracking New Moon for a massive $125M weekend depending on how big a drop there is between Friday’s records and Saturday’s results. I hear the pic logged an “A-” CinemaScore which should mitigate. But that number won’t break the all-time opening weekend record set by The Dark Knight of $158.4M in 2008 or by Spider-Man 3 of $151.M in 2007 or Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest of $135.6M in 2006. But it should surpass Shrek The Third’s 4th place finish of $121.6M in 2007. But all three of those movies were released in the summer, unlike New Moon which should easily score the biggest Non-Summer Friday-Saturday-Sunday (3-Day) Weekend opening ever. (Note that none of these numbers have been adjusted for inflation or higher ticket costs or theater counts.) Amazing, especially since Hollywood thought New Moon might, repeat might, do Iron Man numbers of around $100M. New Moon also smashed the $36M earned by Twilight on its first Friday exactly a year ago. (Thursday night, Summit re-issued Twilight in 2,057 theaters and took in $1.3M.) Twilight’s opening weekend total was $69.7M.
Read more here.
Wow! 72.7 Million for opening day? Are you surprised by New Moon’s numbers?
