Eclipse Closes Its Box Office Run at $300,531,751 Domestic

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According to Box Office Mojo, Eclipse has finally ended its run in theaters with a total of $300,531,751 in the domestic market. International sales still continue, and there are some countries where it has not even opened yet!

Eclipse was the first women-driven film to hit the elusive 300K mark since Titanic back in 1997. It’s a mark that very few films ever hit, let alone a film that is predominantly driven by female dollars.

The $300,531,751 will easily put Eclipse into the top 10 films of the year, and in all likelihood it will stay in the top five.  right now it is in fourth position behind Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, and Iron Man 2. The only film that opens between now and the end of the year that is likely to overtake the Eclipse tally is the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The summer release was an interesting experiment since the other films opened at Thanksgiving time.  Eclipse certainly benefited by a summer of lackluster films that had lots of PR, but in the end didn’t live up to the hype. In short it lucked out by not having lots of competing films. Rather than see a movie that got panned, people went back and saw Eclipse again. Granted, folks tended to see it more than once anyway, but the movie choices or lack thereof this summer certainly helped.

To summarize the previous films box office totals:

Twilight: number 7 film of the year in 2008    $192,769,854

New Moon: number 4 film of the year in 2009 $296,623,634

One day release of back-to-back Twilight and New Moon: number 131 of the year $2,385,237

Box Office Mojo: Eclipse, 30 Million Record Setting Midnight Tally

According to BoxOffice Mojo:

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse ripped into the record books with its midnight launch, grossing over $30 million at more than 4,000 theaters. That surpassed The Twilight Saga: New Moon‘s previous benchmark of $26.3 million. Included in Eclipse‘s sum was a new IMAX midnight milestone of over $1 million at 192 venues, topping Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen‘s $959,000.

The vampre(sic) romance sequel had already cast the widest opening net ever, biting into a whopping 4,416 locations (more theaters are expected to be added on Friday). Iron Man 2 previously held that title with 4,380 locations, while Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince holds the record for highest location count ever at 4,455. Eclipse‘s count includes 193 IMAX venues, which is just shy of Shrek Forever After‘s 194 record.”

See more on Box Office Mojo

The thing to keep in mind is that this figure only counts sales in the USA made through 3:00am this morning. It does not count the sales that are picked up during the day today through 11:59pm this evening.  Once those figures come in tomorrow afternoon to reflect the first day’s complete total that number should be $150,000,000. This will solidly put Eclipse opening in the top ten movies of the year.

The big question is going to be if Eclipse can get to the 300,000,000 million mark. New Moon was just shy at circa 296,000,000. No matter what it is going to continues to smash records for what is a predominately female driven enterprise.