Actor Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart attends the 'Twilight' Photocall during the 3rd Rome International Film Festival held at the Auditorium Parco della Musica on October 30, 2008 in Rome, Italy.
As expected, ‘Twilight’ took a huge bite at the box office, coming in #1 with a little over $70 million dollars. It’s the biggest opener for a female director since Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact’ took in $41 million ten years ago (1998). The film started fast with $7 million coming in just from the midnight showings held on Thursday night. Because of the hype and unfamiliar territory, being a new film, box office experts weren’t certain if the film would gross that much money. Many predicted the amount but did so with trepidations. With such a huge fan base, mostly female teens, the numbers held true.
‘Twilight’’s distributor, Summit Entertainment, has already greenlit the sequel to the film, ‘New Moon’, to start moving forward and may do the third film right afterwards to avoid huge production costs. Coming in second place was the James Bond film, ‘Quantum of Solace’ with $27.4 million dollars. Down 68% from the previous week, the film has taken in $109 millon dollars to date domestically, and nearly $420 million overall.
With so many parents probably taking their underage teens to see ‘Twilight’, Disney’s animated film ‘Bolt’ took a hit but managed to bring in $27 million dollars. Right behind it for fourth place was the other animated film, ‘Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa’ with $16 million dollars and a total of $137 million to date.
Rounding out the top five was the comedy film, ‘Role Models’ with $7.2 million dollars and a total cume of $48 million. Countinuing to do well at the gate is ‘The Secret Life of Bees’. It’s still in the top ten and has grossed $35 million dollars to date.
