Twilight takes a bite out of box office
LOS ANGELES — The sun has set on the Twilight franchise with one last blockbuster opening for the supernatural romance.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 sucked up $141.3 million domestically over opening weekend and $199.6 million more overseas for a worldwide debut of $340.9 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The finale ranks eighth on the list of all-time domestic debuts, and leaves Twilight with three of the top10 openings, joining 2009’s New Moon (No. 7 with $142.8 million) and last year’s Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (No. 9 with $138.1 million).
Last May’s The Avengers is No. 1 with $207.4 million. Batman is the only other franchise with more than one top-10 opening: last July’s The Dark Knight Rises (No. 3 with $160.9 million) and 2008’s The Dark Knight (No. 4 with $158.4 million).
Though Twilight still is a female-driven franchise, with girls and women making up 79 per cent of the opening-weekend audience, the finale drew the biggest male crowds in the series.
Action-minded guys had more to root for in the finale as Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner join in a colossal battle to end the story of warring vampires and werewolves.
“Our male audience particularly has enjoyed this film,” said Richie Fay, head of distribution for Lionsgate, whose Summit Entertainment banner releases the Twilight movies. “With the action scenes in this one, we’re hoping the holdover business will reflect the fact that males have kind of found it out.”
The movie also helped lift Lionsgate into the big leagues among Hollywood studios. Paced by its $400 million smash with The Hunger Games and now the Twilight finale, Lionsgate surpassed $1 billion at the domestic box office for the first time.
Some box-office watchers had expected the last Twilight movie to open with a franchise record the way the Harry Potter finale did last year with $169.2 million, the second-best domestic debut on the charts.
“I thought that for the final installment, it might eclipse the franchise record, but to look at $141.3 million and say that’s a disappointment, that’s kind of crazy,” said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for boxoffice tracker Hollywood.com. “It’s one of the most consistently performing franchises of all time.”
The Twilight finale took over the No. 1 spot from Sony’s James Bond adventure Skyfall, which slipped to second-place with $41.5 million domestically in its second weekend. Skyfall raised its domestic total to $161.3 million. The franchise’s third film starring Daniel Craig as Bond, Skyfall began rolling out overseas in late October and has hit $507.9 million internationally at the box office. The film’s global total climbed to $669.2 million, helping to lift Sony to its best year ever with $4 billion worldwide, topping the studio’s $3.6 billion haul in 2009.
Skyfall passed the previous franchise high of $599.2 million worldwide for 2006’s Casino Royale.