Breaking Dawn: What to Expect from Box Office Numbers: Lookout New Moon Record!

It’s a special kind of hilarious to see various mainstream critics stating that Breaking Dawn isn’t as good of a movie as its predecessors. I love Catherine Hardwicke as much as the next person, but trying to say that Twilight’s low budget blue wash, Maybeline make up, and wonky hand-held camera angles as Edward drags Bella up a mountain in the rain are better than Bill Condon’s cinematic Breaking Dawn…it’s just not dealing in reality, at least not in my reality having seen the film twice.

Here is why Breaking Dawn is going to do well…really well at the box office.

1. The best “must be seen in the theater again” scenes since Twilight. When it comes to romantic moments, Twilight had the car ride, the dance, the longing looks. Despite New Moon’s vastly improved production values, New Moon was a lot of no Edward and an unsatisfying reunion when he did finally come back. Eclipse was lots of action and CGI. Granted we had the proposal, and the leg hitch, but a lot of the romantic soul wasn’t there. The birth not withstanding, Breaking Dawn has wedding and honeymoon that fans are going to want to see again and again and again.

2. Relatively speaking there is no competition at the box office. What are we going to do, see the Happy Feet 3D instead? Granted the Immortals with Kellan Lutz is playing, but it’s no more of a threat than Jackson Rathbone’s The Last Airbender was with Eclipse the last time out.

3. It’s November. Don’t get me wrong, Eclipse did really well with it’s June release. It was the most successful in the franchise movie yet, but in the summer there are a lot of choices when it comes to entertainment, and I don’t just mean the movies. The Eclipse total probably would have even been higher if it had been a fall movie. We are in November where the beach, family vacations, kids out of school, etc aren’t distracting us. Breaking Dawn will rule in a November environment.

4. According to The Wrap, Breaking Dawn is on target to take out the New Moon total and a possible Harry Potter total.

“Breaking Dawn’s” projections fall short of the $169 million all-time record set by “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” last summer, but should be roughly in line with the franchise’s highest grossing opener, the $140 million posted by 2009’s “New Moon.”

The studio is feeling more conservative, projecting an opening weekend on the order of $125 million.

Summit did not release the number of theaters that plan to host midnight screenings, but studio executives told TheWrap that the movie may be a 12 a.m. record breaker.

It could easily surpass the $43.5 million benchmark set by “Deathly Hallows Part 2” in late night showings.”

So what are we going to predict in all of this? Here’s where our guess is (and let’s see how close we are when the numbers all close):

1. Breaking Dawn will overtake Eclipse’s top single day and opening day gross records to put it number 3 on the all time record list right behind Harry Potter’s final installment and New Moon.

2. It will end its run as the number three movie of the year behind Transformers and Harry Potter

3. It will break the $300,000,000 mark set by Eclipse

Early numbers will come out over the weekend, but the really, really solid stuff will be in Monday afternoon. Let the games begin!

Eclipse Is the Second Most Profitable Movie of 2010

Most Profitable Movies Released in 2010

There are other movies who brought in big box office dollars, but because they cost so much more to make. In other words they flopped or barely broke even. A lot of small budget movies raked in megaprofit when they landed in the top 100 films of the year. Two examples were from Summit Entertainment: Letters to Juliet and Remember Me

What’s interesting is to look at the box office totals for the above movies. Alice in Wonderland and Toy Story 3 are the only two that came in ahead of Eclipse. Harry Potter’s box office run has not yet closed out; however given it’s rate of intake it’s not likely to overtake Eclipse.

Check out more data on The Numbers
Via RPattz news

Eclipse to Break New Moon Sales Total

eclipse-posterAfter the Monday box office numbers are in, in all probability, Eclipse will break the box office total set by New Moon. If not Monday, it will no doubt have it by Tuesday.

New Moon capped its box office run of 133 days with a figure of $296,623,634 domestically.

Twilight capped off its 147 day box office run with a figure of $192,769,854 domestically.

As of right now Eclipse, is on day 47 with a domestic total of $295,842,444.

The movie has been pulling in roughly $300,000 during weekdays  the last week. So, assuming that pattern continues, Eclipse will over take the New Moon total by the time figures are released tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday at the latest.

After this benchmark, it will be interesting to see if it can be the first primarily female driven film to crack the $300,000,000 mark since Titanic.

All figures via Box Office Mojo

EDITED: It will make the cut based on the Tuesday box office results. It’s currently just shy, roughly $56,000 from tying New Moon’s total!

E!: The Finalish Word on Eclipse

E! takes a look at the money Eclipse is earning in a summer where most intended blockbusters have positively fizzled.

A lot has been made that Eclipse isn’t living up to expectations. Unfortunately the numbers disagree. Initially, statistically New Moon made more; however New Moon experienced significant box office drop offs that Eclipse hasn’t. For example the first week that Eclipse made less than 1 million dollars on a given day was this past week. New Moon on the other hand, 30 days into its release, had multiple days with less than a million dollar take.

According to E!:

“With a $290.2 million domestic take, as of Wednesday, Eclipse is the third-biggest grosser of the summer, and the fourth biggest of the year. Worldwide, it’s at about $650 million, which makes it the year’s biggest 2-D movie so far, and third biggest overall, behind the 3-D-assisted Alice in Wonderland and Toy Story 3.

In short, Eclipse was, as expected, big.

“When you consider that the film cost under $70 million, it will probably, along with Toy Story 3, end up as one of the most profitable films of the year,” Exhibitor Relations’ box office analyst Jeff Bock said in an email.”

The only place where Eclipse is not coming in as big as New Moon is in the foreign box office. That seems to be accounted for by fluctuating exchange rates. If you’ve traveled overseas lately you know what that is like.

“Summit exec Richie Fay said Friday he expects Eclipse to keep the edge domestically. Worldwide, he was less sure, saying foreign-exchange rates may cut into Eclipse‘s bottom line, although the film’s overseas attendance has been virtually even with that of New Moon‘s.

“We’re not really looking at franchise fatigue,” Fay said. “I think our audience has remained relatively loyal. It might have [even] expanded a little bit.”

See more on E!

Eclipse reached the 290 million mark domestically this week.  New Moon ended its box office run with 296 million.  We’re going to predict that by next weekend Eclipse will reach the same box office draw as as did New Moon.  Additionally, we are going to go out on a limb and state that we think Eclipse will reach the elusive 300 million mark, something that few films reach. If it does so, it will mark the first time since Titanic that a primarily women’s draw feature will have reached this mark.

Comparing the Twilight Saga Movies: 13 Days of Domestic Numbers

Everyone out there is spinning the numbers of the Eclipse. In general, it doesn’t often happen that franchise movies each become more successful. Frequently there’s an initial buzz and then some do better than others. Now regardless of whether or not Eclipse out sells New Moon, it’s difficult to think of a movie produced by an indie studio on a 50 day shooting schedule that has so far domestically grossed almost $240,000,000 as an economic failure. By the time the year closes, Eclipse will easily keep its place in the top ten movies of the year and have a decent shot of landing in the top five.

Below are charts via Box Office Mojo showing how each Twilight movie did in its first 13 days of release. Keep in mind that the first two were Friday releases so that accounts for number spike in different weekend locations.

Twilight

New Moon

Eclipse

To break the New Moon box office, Eclipse has to beat $296,623,634.  Given what it has earned so far, that leaves   $56,924,605 to go domestically.

Eclipse Breaks IMAX Record

According to The Numbers:

“As expected, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse had a huge opening on IMAX; in fact, it set a record, pulling in $1 million during midnight screenings alone. This broke the previous record of $950,000 held by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Over the six days, the film made $9 million on 193 IMAX screens domestically, while it added $235,000 on just 11 IMAX screens internationally.

Also announced this week were the results of IMAX’s second quarter at the box office, and they were impressive. From April to June, IMAX pulled in $115.0 million, which is a 37% increase from the same time last year. It goes without saying that this is much stronger than the industry at large. Over the first six months, IMAX has generated $347.2 million in ticket sales, more than triple last year’s pace.”

See more on The Numbers

June 30-July 3 Eclipse Box Office Tally Is 161 Million

According to Gossip Cop:

“The latest numbers are in, and Eclipse will rake in an estimated $89 million for the holiday weekend.

So far the film has made $161 million in North America and is expected to earn $181 million by the end of the holiday weekend.

Internationally, since opening in June 30, Eclipse has grossed an estimated $100.2 million from 42 territories.”

You can see the full evolution of the numbers here.

How does Eclipse rank overall this year? Box Office Mojo has the chart. It hasn’t been updated since Friday, but assuming the estimates are correct, than Eclipse should easily move ahead of Clash of the Titans and be in fifth place when solid numbers are release Monday afternoon.

New Moon capped out it’s nearly 6-month box office run at approximately 296 million the question is, “Can Eclipse pull off the same or exceed that total?” Many franchise movies put out stunning numbers, but they don’t always top themselves film to film. For example the Harry Potter films have always done well but the two most highest grossing film remains the first one.

Eclipse 92.8 Million Domestic in 48 Hours

Our friend Larry has the analysis to go with the numbers. He points out clearly what a lot of news sources are missing in his apples and oranges comparison!

“Early estimates as of Friday 12:00 noon show The Twilight Saga: Eclipse finished #1 again on Thursday, taking in another $24.2M from 4,416 locations. Adding in Wednesday’s numbers gives the film a cumulative total of $92.8M domestic…How does this compare with New Moon? That film took in $72.7M its opening day and dropped 41.8% to earn $42.3M the next. That gave it $115M after its first two days. But, again, that was a Friday-Saturday as opposed to a Wednesday-Thursday. Apples to oranges, as the saying goes… Once Friday numbers are released early Saturday morning, when the film will be in competition with the rest of the movie marketplace, we’ll be able to begin to judge the success of the film’s early days.”

See Larry’s full coverage here.

Eclipse Breaks Wednesday Release Record

According to Box Office Mojo Eclipse has set a Wednesday release sales record. Yesterday we covered the sales figures that covered midnight to 3:00am where Eclipse set a 30 million dollar sales record in that midnight release catergory. Now the figures reflect midnight through 11:59pm yesterday, June 30.

“The Twilight Saga: Eclipse drained more of its opening day demand with its midnight opening than The Twilight Saga: New Moon did. Despite setting the midnight record with over $30 million, Eclipse’s full day came in at $68.5 million, falling short of New Moon’s $72.7 million record ($26.3 million of which from its midnight launch).

Playing on approximately 8,000 screens at an opening-record 4,416 locations, Eclipse still had a phenomenal debut, setting two other records. The vampire romance sequel boasted the largest Wednesday gross of all time, surpassing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’s $62 million. It also logged the top-grossing summer day ever, surpassing The Dark Knight’s $67.2 million.

Overall, Eclipse posted the second highest-grossing single day of all time, behind only its predecessor.

See more on Box Office Mojo

LA Times: Eclipse Destined to Make 180 Million By Monday

According to the Los Angeles Times:

“Last November’s “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” grossed $179 million in the U.S. and Canada by its sixth day and “Eclipse” will likely do at least that much by Monday and possibly as much as $200 million, said people who have seen prerelease surveys. The new film has an advantage over its predecessor given the holiday weekend, the fact that many students are off from school and can go to weekday matinees, and that it is the first “Twilight” movie to play on premium priced Imax screens.

As a result, total receipts for the new film will almost certainly be very front-loaded, with most of its revenue coming in the first week.

“It’s a compressed period during which we expect to do a whole bunch of business,” said Summit domestic distribution president Richard Fay.

It remains to be seen, however, whether “Eclipse” will significantly outperform the $297-million total gross of “New Moon,” or if it will simply be the same “Twilight” fans turning out once again.”

To us, what they are not taking into consideration here is that the rewatch factor on Eclipse is going to be far higher because we are no longer dealing with depressed Bella,and a movie where Edward is largely absent. We are now moving on to the book that is (in our opinion) most fans’ favorite, and the romance is there. People are going to want to see it again and again. As for the twiguys, not sure how it’s factoring in, but in the showings we’ve gone to there are far more testosterone laden guys who were not dragged there by their girlfriends. To quote a pair that Alphie met, “Team Bella! Kristen Stewart is HOT!”

See more on the LA Times.