Everyone was wrong. That's the only conclusion one can draw from the actual box-office figures for The Twilight Saga: New Moon when compared not only with weekend forecasts but also with official estimates released on Sunday. Sunday's figures were based on actual results for Friday and Saturday and an educated 
guess as to how much the movie would earn on Sunday. In the end it turned out that Sunday's business exceeded Summit Entertainment's guesstimate by a whopping $2.1 million. In the end, the movie actually earned $142.8 million for the three days -- the most any film has ever made outside of summer and behind last year's The Dark Knight (with $158 million) and 2007's Spider-Man 3 ($151 million) on the all-time list. Before it opened on Friday, box-office fortune tellers had predicted it would earn $80-100 million, and those predicting it would cross the $100-million mark were dismissed as moon-blinded know-nothings. But while the domestic estimates seemed to have been conservatively lowballed, the international ones seemed downright off-base. Summit said late Monday that the film actually earned $132.1 million -- or $14 million more than the Sunday projection. That brought the worldwide total to $274.9 million. Today's (Tuesday) Los Angeles Times explained the discrepancy by observing that, unlike the major studios, Summit does not have its own foreign distribution operation but instead relies on a number of smaller distributors who take their time reporting ticket sales. Indeed, some of them have yet to disclose weekend totals in some markets.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
“MOON” SHINES BRIGHTER
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The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Media by Numbers (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Summit, $142,839,137, (New); 2. The Blind Side, Warner Bros. $34,119,372, (New); 3. 2012, Sony, $26,410,206, 2 Wks. ($108,131,263); 4. Planet 51, Sony/Tri-star/Alliance, $12,286,129, (New); 5. Disney's A Christmas Carol, Disney, $12,275,024, 2 Wks. ($79,836,002); 6. Precious, Lionsgate, $10,881,772, 3 Wks. ($21,277,521); 7. The Men Who Stare At Goats, Overture, $2,829,031, 2 Wks. ($27,680,089); 8. Couples Retreat, Universal, $1,943,075, 7 Wks. ($104,992,030); 9. The Fourth Kind, Universal, $1,747,085, 3 Wks. ($23,359,890); 10. Michael Jackson's This Is It, Sony, $1,617,417, 4 Wks. ($70,258,545).
