We knew it was going to be big, but I don’t think anyone predicted it would be like out-of-this world huge! The fantasy/romance, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” made an astronomical figure — an estimated $140 million this weekend — to easily become the number one movie in the country!!
This is the second in the “Twilight” saga of two young lovers, teenager Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen, based on a series of bestselling novels by Stephenie Meyers. In “New Moon” it becomes a love triangle when Bella gets close to Jacob Black, played by Taylor Lautner, who happens to be a werewolf. Kristen Stewart stars as Bella and Robert Pattinson is Edward.
Female fans demonstrated their power at the Box Office by propelling “New Moon” into the third best opening ever, behind “Spider-Man 3” and “The Dark Knight.” However, “New Moon” took down Batman for the best ever Friday run with a whopping $72.7 million. “The Dark Knight” had held that record with a haul of $67.2 million on its first Friday.
Also, female ticket buyers apparently produced a boffo weekend for the new film “The Blind Side”, which debuted in second place with an estimated $34.5 million. This is a sports drama based on the real-life story of NFL player Michael Oher and it stars Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, and Quinton Aaron.
Last week’s top film, the disaster thriller “2012”, slid into third with about $26.5 million. A new animated flick, “Planet 51” landed in fourth with a debut of around $12.6 million. “Planet 51” stars Dwayne Johnson, Gary Oldman, John Cleese, and Jessica Biel in a story about a NASA astronaut who lands on a distance planet that looks very much like America did in the 1950s, except all the people are green!
Rounding out the top five, Disney’s “A Christmas Carol” with $12.2 million, bringing its three week total to nearly $80 million.
