You will have to excuse me; I was away on business. Now that I am back, I am exhausted so I will be doing nothing for the rest of that day. That said, I could not overlook what amounted to the third best opening of all time. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON opened to the best opening day of all time on Friday with over $70 million and finished the weekend with roughly double that. Everyone knew it would be huge but who could have predicted this? The true test will be next weekend. Most fans caught it right away so next weekend will show how far past its fanbase the film will play.
In other box office news, Sandra Bullock has a great year with THE BLIND SIDE opening over $34 million, following her summer hit, THE PROPOSAL. PRECIOUS continues to expand to incredible numbers, almost increasing by 100% over last week after adding approximately 450 screens. There was nothing out of this world about PLANET 51's fourth place opening. Below the TOP 10, FANTASTIC MR. FOX took in another per screen average of nearly $50K before expanding to over 2000 screens next week. Werner Herzog's update of BAD LIEUTENANT starring Nicolas Cage brought in a mild per screen of just under $10K but good word of mouth could turn that around as it expands. And this week's biggest per screen average went to Pedro Almodovar's latest, BROKEN EMBRACES, pulling $54K on just 2 screens.
NEXT WEEK: Happy Thanksgiving everyone! John Travolta and Robin Williams are looking for WILD HOGS numbers with OLD DOGS opening on 3300 screens. James McTeigue, director of V FOR VENDETTA returns with NINJA ASSASSIN on 2500 screens. The critically acclaimed THE ROAD with Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron opens wide. And on the smaller end, character films like THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE and ME AND ORSON WELLES open on a handful of screens and Disney platforms THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG on just two screens before going wide in December.
Source: BOX OFFICE MOJO