AFTER TWILIGHT, IT’S A DARK WORLD

All of the films in theaters this past weekend combined didn’t come close to earning what the No. 1 film did over the comparable weekend a year ago. That film, of course, was Summit/Lionsgate’s final Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn — Part Two, which opened with $141 million that weekend and was followed by the second weekend of Columbia/MGM’s Skyfall ($41 million) and Disney/DreamWorks’ Lincoln ($21 million). By contrast, this weekend’s top film, Disney/Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World was tops with $36.6 million in its second weekend (significantly below the studio’s estimate on Sunday of $38.5 million), followed by Universal’s The Best Man Holiday with $30.1 million and CBS Films’ Last Vegas with $8.4 million. The result was that, with a total of $121 million, all of this weekend’s films failed to earn half what last year’s films earned during the same weekend: $249 million.