Box Office Results: Twilight Saga: New Moon Destroys Pretty Much Everything Opening Weekend

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This weekend The Twilight Saga: New Moon crushed everything else, obviously. I say that because there was never any doubt that this movie wouldn’t be a mongo success for Summit. On Thursday night at 12:01 AM, New Moon broke the record previously held by The Dark Knight for most tickets sold at midnight. And on Friday, November 20^th, the film’s official release date, it shattered opening day records with a whopping $72.7 million, passing Twilight’s own record of $36 million. Expecting its total weekend haul to crush The Dark Knight’s? New Moon opened with the third-largest weekend ever with $140.7 million, behind Dark Knight and Spider-Man 3. Just let that sink in; I can’t even fathom that amount of money.

Everything else that opened this weekend was no match for New Moon; however The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock outperformed Warner Bros. expectations. Hauling an estimated $34.5 million, Blind Side had the biggest debut for a sports drama, surpassing previous record-holder Coach Carter. Out of the three major debuts this weekend, Planet 51, New Moon and Side, the movie, also starring Tim McGraw, was most well-received with critics, earning a 71% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

2012 dropped a sharp 59.4% and dropped from first to third this weekend, earning $26.5 million. Roland Emmerich’s disaster flick is up to a domestic sum of $108.2 million in ten days. I have no doubt that 2012 will earn its entire $200 million budget back and then some.

Planet 51, the animated flick that, like last year’s Bolt, decided to take on a movie adaptation of a Stephanie Meyer novel opened with a predictable $12.6 million. However unlike Disney’s Bolt, Planet earned an 18% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the worst-received debut this weekend. Bolt also managed to take in $13.6 million more than 51.

A Christmas Carol rounds out the top five with an estimated $12.2 million, bringing the Disney animated tale’s total gross to $79.8 million in 17 days. Also on a $200 million budget, it seems unlikely that it will make much domestically after paying all of that off. Carol’s attendance was less than The Santa Clause 2 and The Polar Express at this same point.

Other releases-

• Nic Cage’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans debuted with $257,000 on 27 screens.
• Penelope Cruz’s Broken Embraces opened with an impressive $108,000 on two screens.
• In the expansion of Precious, the critically-acclaimed drama had an 87.4% increase in attendance, coming in at #6 with $11 million.

Here is the box office results according to studio estimates Sunday:

1. 1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon…$140.7 million
2. 2. The Blind Side…$34.5 million
3. 3. 2012…$26.5 million
4. 4. Planet 51…$12.6 million
5. 5. A Christmas Carol (2009)…$12.2 million
6. 6. Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” By Sapphire…$11 million
7. 7. The Men Who Stare At Goats…$2.8 million
8. 8. Couple’s Retreat…$2 million
9. 9. The Fourth Kind…$1.7 million
10. 10. Law Abiding Citizen…$1.6 million