Well, the Twi-hards have spoken, and The Twilight Saga: New Moon is a hit.  Not just a run-of-the-mill number one weekend debut, either.  New Moon has brought in a staggering amount of money and shattered a bunch of box office records along the way.  For example, New Moon took in $26.3 million dollars thanks to its midnight screenings alone!  On Friday proper, it brought in another $72.7 million dollars, for the biggest Friday opening in movie history.  For the record, for the whole weekend, New Moon has brought in a staggering $140.7 million dollars, for the third-biggest opening in movie history behind The Dark Knight and Spider-man 3.

It’s staggering, but New Moon wasn’t the only record-breaking movie this weekend.  The Blind Side, a sports drama starring Sandra Bullock, debuted with $34.5 million dollars.  That’s the most for a sports movie in history.  The film is based on the real-life story of Michael Oher, who overcame a traumatic childhood and his biological mother’s drug addiction to become a first-round NFL draft pick and millionaire athlete.

Still, that’s nothing compared to the Twilight frenzy.  I’ve never seen a movie sell out that many screenings in a row; when I went Saturday to try and review it for one of my other web gigs, there was a four hour wait to see it, and those screenings were going fast (I just walked into a screening on Sunday night, no problem).  I can’t imagine how many hundreds of buckets of popcorn they sold.

Image:  USA Today

Tags: Twilight, New Moon, record-breaking movies, box office, biggest opening weekends ever, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, The Blind Side

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