MTV talked to Fandango about the ticket buying phenomena that is The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Aside from just pure raw data about the number of seats sold, Fandango has been using a questionnaire for purchasers and shares their analysis with MTV. Here are just a few factoids:

“Obviously, ‘Twilight’ had a huge following of book readers before the first movie was released, but these results might indicate that the first movie broadened the ‘Twilight’ following and expanded its audience — and that many moviegoers started reading the books after seeing the movie.”

“68 percent of the ticket-buyers weren’t aware of the “Twilight” franchise until the first film was released in November 2008. So, in essence, only 32 percent of the fans who have bought “New Moon” tickets have been “Twilight” fans for longer than 12 months.”

“Sports-betting Web site Bookmaker.com has asked its odds-makers to determine how much “New Moon” will make in its opening weekend; 40 percent believe the film will take in somewhere between $66 million and $80 million. That total would put it on track to equal or exceed the receipts of the first film.”

There’s a whole list of other stats over on MTV.  The whole piece is, in our opinion, one of the better articles MTV has written on Twilight. It’s definitely worth a read.

Now we have to say we really agree with the article based on our very unscientific observations of who comments on our blog and forums and who we’ve seen at Twilight conventions run by three different companies this year where our staff was on the panels. We can’t count the number of people who only got into Twilight at like Christmas 2008. So often we’d meet people and have to explain that Stephenie had outtakes on her website, or they’d ask what is Midnight Sun.

The other thing about those new fans that is really cool is they all have that slightly obsessed, giddy, “I just have to share this with someone” thing that those of us who got into Twilight earlier all went through. For us it was kind of like being a high school senior and looking at a freshman who reminded us of ourselves a few years ago. It’s so cool just to see that raw enthusiasm out of people ranging from 10 to 80.  Plus these guys read 4 books in row and didn’t have to wait…not even, going to lie, Pel is slightly jealous about that.

The only downside we’ve seen is that when we now see mass gatherings of fans, the homemade tee shirts have all but disappeared. The commercial ones have taken over. We kind of miss that old school originality from back in the day when slogans like, “Edward Cullen: Cooler Than You Since 1917” were seen for the first time on a homemade shirt.

Anyway enough nostalgia before we get all weepy and start cyber hugging and singing Sarah McLachlan. We do have a poll because we are curious about some of the things in the MTV article.