The penultimate adaptation in the series of novels by Stephenie Meyer kicked up dust leading into Friday with $30.25 million at midnight shows, leading to some projections of a potential weekend haul at $160 million on the high end. The Twilight releases tend always to be heavily front-loaded, however, with die hard fans turning out in droves almost immediately, so the estimate ended up being $139.5 million instead. More than half of that figure was brought in by shows on Friday, as Breaking Dawn stuck with the front-loaded franchise tradition.
Still, $139.5 million is absolutely nothing to sneeze at. In fact, it makes this the second-biggest opening in the Twilight series' brief history, with only New Moon debuting to $142.7 million in 2009. $142.7 million. Breaking Dawn - Part 1 now stands as the fifth-biggest opening weekend of all time (not adjusted for inflation, of course). Ahead of it are, in descending order, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 3, and New Moon.
The Twilight series will forever be associated principally with adolescent women, but this weekend, 60% of Breaking Dawn's audience were over 21 years old, which makes sense as fans of the novels are, like the rest of us, always aging. As you'd expect, 80% of attendees were female. Regardless of the demographic breakdown, the film's opening performance bodes well for next year's already-filmed franchise finale The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2.
Director George Miller's follow-up to his animated hit Happy Feet didn't debut to quite the same commercial fanfare. While the first film opened to $41.5 million in November of 2006, Happy Feet Two's debut second place weekend brought in $22.0 million. That the sequel has started out with 45% of it predecessor's opening would indicate that a Happy Feet Three is seeming unlikely. The new film also had 3D ticket prices to boost its numbers. Still, five years ago Happy Feet wasn't facing a pop-cultural juggernaut on the scale of Twilight, so that should be taken into consideration.
Down in tenth place, The Descendants managed to make its way into the top ten, despite playing in only 29 locations. The return of director Alexander Payne for his first feature since 2004's Sideways received an exceedingly positive critical reception and pulled in $1.2 million over the weekend. That breaks down to a per-theater average of $42,150. For comparison, Breaking Dawn's average was about $34,000 on more than 4,000 screens. The drama, which stars George Clooney, is set to expand into 425 theaters just before Thanksgiving, and it should be able to build an audience based on the critical response and solid word of mouth.
Anyways, here are the estimated figures for the top ten films in America over the weekend:
1. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 $139.5 million New Release
2. Happy Feet Two $22.0 million New Release
3. Immortals $12.2 million $52.9 million
4. Jack and Jill $12.0 million $41.0 million
5. Puss in Boots $10.7 million $122.3 million
6. Tower Heist $7.0 million $53.4 million
7. J. Edgar $5.9 million $20.6 million
8. A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas $2.9 million $28.3 million
9. In Time $1.6 million $33.4 million
10. The Descendants $1.2 million $1.3 million
Next up for the Thanksgiving holiday are family-oriented releases, with both The Muppets and Hugo arriving in theaters nationwide on Wednesday the 23rd.
