In telling the following news to a friend she replied, “That makes me so mad, The Dark Knight deserves that record for the mere fact it’s a well made film and New Moon is not.” I responded by saying it won’t bother me unless New Moon hangs on next weekend and continues to gain strength. After all, tapping into a moment in pop culture doesn’t make you quality material, just look at Britney Spears. New Moon simply filled a void and has done so to record numbers.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon stormed the box-office with a record midnight opening of $26.2 million topping the previous record set by Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince at $22.2 million. Now, it has gone on to break The Dark Knight‘s previous opening day record of $67 million with a whopping $72.7 million and with 342 fewer theaters than The Dark Knight opened in 2008.
What does this mean? Very little. Like I said, it tapped into a moment in pop culture and if someone wants to point out to you that numbers don’t lie, simply toss back at them the RottenTomatoes score of 29%, the IMDb score of 4.4/10, the MetaCritic score of 46 and the MRQE score of 49%. If numbers don’t lie then I think I have just found four that tell the “truth”.
Laremy will be here tomorrow with the full box-office rundown, but for now here’s how Friday stacked up:
- The Twilight Saga: New Moon – $76.7 million
- The Blind Side – $10.9 million
- 2012 – $8.1 million
- Precious: Based On The Novel “Push” By Sapphire – $3.6 million
- Planet 51 – $3.1 million
- A Christmas Carol – $3.0 million
- The Men Who Stare At Goats – $860,000
- The Fourth Kind – $610,000
- Couples Retreat – $555,000
- Law Abiding Citizen – $495,000
Talk box-office below and if you want to discuss the quality of New Moon please do so in my review thread right here.