Box-Office Results: ‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ Opens with Franchise and ‘Skyfall’ is the Biggest Bond Ever

It’s a massive weekend with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 leading the way with a franchise second best opening of $141.3 million ($340.9m worldwide) as it falls just shy of New Moon‘s $142.8 million brought in back in 2009. After bringing in $71.2 million on Friday (which included $30.4 million from midnights) most thought it would end the weekend around $135, but it held on stronger over the weekend than expected along with an “A” CinemaScore from audiences in attendance.

On the prediction side of things, Laremy expected a bigger turnout for the final film in the franchise and his $168 million prediction was a tad high. On the reader side of things, it was “Ra” that came closest with a prediction of $140 million among predictions that ranged from $112.3 million to as high as $182 million. Turns out par for the franchise was where we all should have stayed as this franchise doesn’t appear to be losing or gaining fans.

In second, Skyfall held on impressively with $41.5 million, only a 53% drop as the film is now over $161.3 million domestically and over $669.2 million worldwide making it the highest grossing James Bond film ever, before adjusting for inflation. Casino Royale topped out at $599 million back in 2006.

Third place is the huge result and Oscar boost for Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln, which brought in a massive $21 million after its impressive limited debut last weekend. Expanding nationwide into 1,775 theaters, the film averaged $16,338 per theater, giving Oscar pundits one more reason to consider it a serious Best Picture contender.

Laremy went high on Twilight and low on Lincoln, predicting a $14.3 million weekend. Reader predictions, again, had a wide range of results as well, but AJ came closest with a $22 million prediction.

Finally, in limited release, Oscar hopefuls Silver Linings Playbook and Anna Karenina each opened in only 16 theaters and brought in $458,430 and $315,395 respectively, which isn’t exactly impressive for either title. Silver Linings averaged $28,652 per theater and Anna Karenina $19,712, which means buzz is going to need to increase for both as they expand over the next couple of weekends to keep that Oscar hope alive, particularly for Silver Linings, which is going to need some box-office success to have any real hope of breaking through in the Best Picture category.

Next weekend sees the Wednesday release of Life of Pi, Red Dawn and Rise of the Guardians and Hitchcock arrives on Friday. Care to wager any early guesses?

The weekend top ten is directly below, though as of publishing numbers for the Bollywood film Jab Tak Hai Jaan were not yet in so it may have managed to crack the top ten. If so, I will update once those numbers arrive.

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