With an estimated opening weekend of $141.3m, it’s not hard to foresee a future in which The Twilight Saga makes some sort of cinematic comeback. Breaking Dawn – Part 2 may be the “final” entry in this series, but a money train like this is hard to stop. We’re reminded of this as we see a new Star Wars (the last of which opened higher than any other Star Wars movie at $108m on opening weekend) back in development. To say the very least, the Summit Entertainment accounting department is not impressed with your dancing on the vampire romance saga’s grave.
It’s already working on a script for three more films starring a CGI sparkly child.
Beyond the madness of a Twilight opening – which was impressive in the consistency, coming within $2m in either direction of Breaking Dawn – Part 1 and New Moon — there were several other movies in play this weekend. Skyfall cleaned up for a second week, earning $41.5m for a second place finish. It has now moved to almost $670m worldwide.
It’s more than likely one week away from being the highest grossing James Bond movie in history.
Also caught up in history is Lincoln, which expanded into 1,775 theaters and continued to keep history buffs and Oscar onlookers in the seats, finishing with an estimated $21m. That’s a 2,100% increase from last week. Now that’s word-of-mouth. Or, as it turns out, what happens when you do a very small release then open wide one week later. Either way, Daniel Day-Lewis is still one bad mamajama.
Next week brings three new, big movies: Rise of the Guardians, Life of Pi and the very bro-tastic Red Dawn. If you’re feeling emasculated by all the Twilight fever, you can always scream “Wolverines!” from a rooftop somewhere.