Super Amazing weekend box office prediction for New Moon!
Based on my top-secret, patented box office estimation formula, I hereby state that Twilight Saga: New Moon will gross $81 million over its first three days. No... wait, it will actually gross $91 million! It will definitely gross $81 million and/or $91 million! How do I know this? Simple. To quote everyone's favorite fictional Spanish teacher, played by Dr. Ken Jeong, I am a box office genius! If you recall, I did a comparison chart of every single franchise launched in the last ten years. I listed every single one unless I'm forgetting a franchise or two and how their sequels did over opening weekend compared to the initial entries. Go there. Checked it out yet?
Ok, welcome back. You'll notice that the biggest percentage jump for pure Fri-Sun stand-alone opening weekends for the first and second film in a franchise is the Harold and Kumar series. Harold and Kumar Goes To White Castle (the best comedy of the decade and one of the finest films made about race relations, but more on that next month) opened with just $5.4 million in its three-day opening weekend. It's terrible sequel, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay opened to $14.9 million. That's a jump of 276% between films. On the other hand, the biggest decline in sequel opening weekends over the last ten years was suffered by Hostel 2. Hostel 2 opened to only $8.2 million, or just 42% of what the original Hostel opened with 18 months earlier ($19.5 million).
Ok, so using the awesome power of math (this is the part on Numbers where my floating head starts pointing at random variables and data points on a black screen), I took 2.76 and multiplied it by 0.42. That gives me approximately 1.16. So, it stands that the opening weekend for New Moon will surpass the opening weekend of Twilight by about 16%. Ok, so 1.16 x $69.6 million = $81 million. Or, you can add up all the percentages of the pure Fri-Sun stand-alone weekend increases, which gets you 32.61. Divide that by the 25 films. That gets you 1.3044. Multiply that figure by 69.6 and you get a probable opening weekend gross of $91 million. So there you have it... Twilight Saga: New Moon will officially gross either $81 million or $91 million over its opening weekend. Read it and weep, Nielsen, CinemaScore, and/or Nikki Finke!
Scott Mendelson
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Comments
But...we'll see. And I most definitely will enjoy the company.
http://jdrourke.wordpress.com/
Apparently it did over $70 million on Friday alone, so is it possible that it might do more than $150 million for the weekend!?!?!?
And although critics have panned it a bit, I actually thought it was LESS cheesy than Twilight, and LESS melodramatic also. Plus, I think the acting was better - which isn't saying tons.
that, and most estimates were way under the $140M it took. pretty impressive.
80% female according to NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/movies/23box.html?hp
I agree that the teen phenomenon has to be respected. However, it is very difficult to cope with the fact that no matter where you look, you’re going to have a Twilight encounter. Every talk show has the actors as guests these days; every five seconds a television commercial related to the film is shown, and even when you’re out to get a burger you’ll have an unwanted Twilight moment. At this second, I’m truly sicker of Robert Pattinson’s constipated look than as I never was of Daniel Radcliffe’s glasses.
It’s true that every time a blockbuster comes along the situation is the same. It is also very true that the film’s main audience is young females. So, why do I have to be exposed in such a generous way to this emo-like vampire craziness? The 140 million dollar earnings of New Moon’s first weekend might be the answer.
Ok, the movie franchise is a gold mine and no one can battle that factor. Nevertheless, there is something especially annoying about this saga that I’m still trying to identify. I have narrowed down the possible reasons to three:
1) Is it the absolute lack of verisimilitude in the story? The way that vampires pass as humans is ridiculous. The story is not solid enough to even set a base of evidence that would make us believe that the people living around the vampire family aren’t really plain stupid.
2) Could it be the absence of the spiritual level that every good science-fiction saga has to have in order to resonate with the audience? The Harry Potter series, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or even Interview with the Vampire; they all have one thing in common: the story has a profound mythology that takes the viewer literally on a trip.
3) Is it that the story is… banal, predictable and trite? I get that the story is intended for teens, but Twilight is more of a soap opera than even Gossip Girl is. The characters are entirely one-dimensional and the actions are more based in drama than anything else, even when we are talking about a movie whose plot is based in fantasy.
Maybe what really bothers me about the Twilight is the fact that is sex what holds the franchise together. It’s evident how the producers envisioned this factor by having in the new film images of both Pattison and Taylor Lautner’s naked upper bodies. Are those vital-plot-saving situations? Doesn’t if feel, a bit, as if Seventeen Magazine unexpectedly had released a movie?
Please, please, please, don’t get me wrong. I, like anyone else, enjoy following stories when sexuality is almost another character. But to have a series of movies with such a weak plot, targeted to teenagers, and sustained only on sexual attraction doesn’t seem that interesting to me. Where’s Porky’s 140 million?