A bit of trivia unknown to me until this week is the info-nugget that Stephenie Meyer, a writer with not a scrap of professional experience up to that point, wrote the first novel in her phenomenally successful young adult series after being inspired by a dream that laid out the basic ingredients of the plot. That dream, it must be said, has paid off nicely. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1, the penultimate installment in the film franchise, has now amassed $247.3 million domestically in three weekends of release, bringing in an estimated $16.9 million since Friday.
It's three-week stranglehold on the box office makes Breaking Dawn the first in the series to hold the number one spot for three consecutive weekends. Twilight and Eclipse both stood atop the box office heap for one week, while New Moon held on for two back in 2009. On its third weekend, New Moon declined 64% for a haul of $15.4 million and ceded the number one spot to The Blind Side. Breaking Dawn outpaced its predecessor this weekend, declining 59.5% and earning $1.5 million more in receipts.
The first film in the franchise from director Bill Condon is also performing exceptionally well in international territories. The film's foreign grosses so far stand at a whopping $341 million, amounting to a global total of $588.3 million earned in the seventeen days since Breaking Dawn debuted Stateside. At the end of their theatrical runs, both New Moon and Eclipse had worldwide totals right around the $700 million mark, with $709.8 and $698.5 million.
While the latest Twilight declined less severely than many analysts anticipated, its biggest competition, The Muppets, didn't build the momentum that many expected. The theatrical revival of Jim Henson's good-natured characters has the word of the mouth and the cross-demographic appeal to maintain a large audience, yet that audience declined by 61.7% in the film's second weekend, for a ten day total of $56.1 million. Though The Muppets did not ascend to first place, the modestly budgeted musical is still a win for Disney.
Martin Scorsese's 3D feature Hugo jumped up to third place this week after opening in fifth last weekend. The film opened in over 1,000 locations for Thanksgiving (compared to more than 4,000 locations for Twilight), adding 563 this week and earning an estimated $7.6 million more in the process. Hugo's total now stands at $25.1 million, and we'll see if the gradual roll out pays off between now and Christmas, with an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Adding nearly 200 theaters, The Descendants rose from ninth to seventh place, but still saw a 33% decline. The first feature from director Alexander Payne since 2004's Sideways has now amassed $18.0 million in limited release. To put that in perspective, it's now playing in a mere 574 locations.
Fox Searchlight, the distributor of The Descendants, opened Steve McQueen's NC-17 drama Shame in just ten theaters over the weekend, and while you won't find the explicit-yet-unerotic drama about sex addiction in the top ten, the much-discussed and almost unanimously-lauded Shame boasted a remarkable per-theater average of $36,000.
Here are the top ten American releases for the weekend of December 2-4:
1. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 $16.9 million $247.3 million
2. The Muppets $11.2 million $56.1 million
3. Hugo $7.6 million $25.1 million
4. Arthur Christmas $7.3 million $25.2 million
5. Happy Feet Two $6.0 million $51.7 million
6. Jack and Jill $5.5 million $64.3 million
7. The Descendants $5.2 million $18.0 million
8. Immortals $4.3 million $75.5 million
9. Tower Heist $4.1 million $70.8 million
10. Puss in Boots $3.0 million $139.5 million
The coming weekend will see two wide releases, with the "Hey, it worked once before" Valentine's Day quasi-sequel New Year's Eve and the R-rated Jonah Hill comedy The Sitter both vying for moviegoers' dollars. In limited release, we'll also be getting Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Young Adult.
