The numbers are in for Summit Entertainment's latest film, "Twilight," and those numbers are big - very big. According to boxofficemojo.com, the movie, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and based on a wildly popular young adult series written by Stephanie Meyer, raked in over $69 million during the Nov. 21 weekend.
That not only easily makes it the number one movie currently in theaters, but makes it a record setter in several other areas. MTV's Web site reports that the $69 million weekend haul is the best opening ever for a movie directed solely by a woman and puts the movie on track to be the highest-grossing vampire film ever. The weekend gross for "Twilight" is the fifth highest November opening ever, and highest movie opening ever for Summit Entertainment, the distributor of "Twilight," boxofficemojo.com reports.
Amidst such success, Summit Entertainment's Web site announced Nov. 22 that it is "officially moving forward with the production of NEW MOON, the second installment" of the "Twilight" film franchise.
I'm not very surprised at the film's success so far. The "Twilight" series has a very passionate following among female readers, both teen-aged and adult, in my experience. With "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" moved from its original November date to next summer, "Twilight" had less competition in attracting the young adult reader crowd.
And while yahoo.movies.com posted an average movie critic rating of C+ for the film, 19,227 user ratings averaged a B+, so I think the movie's still going to do decent repeat business over the next couple of weeks.
The biggest competition Twilight is going to face this holiday season is probably 20 Century Fox's "Australia," which opens tomorrow in theaters. "Australia" is an epic historical romance of the "Titanic." I assume it will attract a lot of female movie-goers, who, according to MTV's Web site, constituted the overwhelming majority of the audience for "Twilight."
Links:
http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2515&p=.htm
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1599996/story.jhtml
http://www.summit-ent.com/
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810010670/info
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