> BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  Christmas comes but once a year, and for Summit that day is the 24 hours after a Twilight movie opens.  (A little credit to the studio, too, for not fudging the numbers, which would have been easy enough to do since they’re so close, in order to claim a franchise […]

>Twilight’s latest, Breaking Dawn Part 1, is opening close to what we expected, but Happy Feet Two was not as able to weather the storm as strongly as we projected.  Overall, the weekend is running 20% ahead of the same weekend last year, not a bad accomplishment given Harry Potter was in the mix last […]

> Deadline has preliminary numbers for Friday, and they suggest BREAKING DAWN PART 1 will continue to narrowly edge out the opening weekend of New Moon in 2009, with a $73.5M Friday (compared to $72.7M for New Moon).  If the number holds, and if Breaking Dawn 1 doesn’t turn out to be more front-loaded than […]

> The Hollywood Reporter has preliminary Friday numbers suggesting that BREAKING DAWN PART 1 will gross $65-75M for the day, including $30.3M in Thursday midnight showings.  Even at the high-end, that would make Breaking Dawn more front-loaded with midnight viewers than its November 2009 predecessor New Moon, which made $72.7M on its opening Friday, of […]

> … and here we go.  BREAKING DAWN PART 1 narrowly set a Twilight franchise record last night with the 2d highest midnight screening grosses on record, $30.25M.  This was (very slightly) ahead of Eclipse‘s $30.1M last June, as well as the November 2009 opening of New Moon, which reached $26.3M for its midnight screenings. […]

    THE TWILIGHT SAGA – BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  Watch It At Home – The Saga Sags In Slow Prelude To The End   The worldwide phenomenon that is Twilight often finds itself compared to Harry Potter, and for obvious reasons:  both are multi-film, multi-billion dollar franchises aimed at young audiences and telling a […]

> Welcome to the weekend of THE TWILIGHT SAGA:  BREAKING DAWN PART I, where every ticket sold will be the subject of excited speculation about just how big an opening the sure-to-be-blockbuster will have. We begin overseas, where BD1 opened yesterday in 5 territories, before a much larger international push tomorrow. The total for the […]

>This weekend is all about Twilight Breaking Dawn, which will be huge.  But Happy Feet Two should manage an opening that would look stellar on any other recent weekend.  Overall box office this weekend should be up 33% from the same weekend last year.         Opening at more than 4,100 theaters in North […]