The reign of The Dark Knight is over: The Twilight Saga: New Moon is now officially the movie with the most successful opening day of all time, easily beating Batman's 2008 record. But what about the opening weekend total?
The movie's final opening day gross was $72.7 million, which included a second record of $26.3 million for the movie's 12:01 Friday showings alone. The Friday take not only sailed past the Dark Knight's previous record of $67.2 million, but was more than double the original Twilight's debut of $36 million.
Right now, estimates for the movie's weekend haul are somewhere in the region of $125-130 million, which will leave one Dark Knight record intact (It made $158.4 million in its first weekend). But that doesn't mean that estimates could be wildly underestimating the appeal of shirtless, hairless supernatural teenagers. After all, the original weekend estimate was around $85 million...
'New Moon' breaks boxoffice record [Hollywood Reporter]