“TWILIGHT’S” BITE WORSE THAN ITS HYPE
July 5, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse took a $68.5-million bite out of the box office over the weekend, its studio estimated on Sunday, bringing its domestic total after five days to $162 million. But that figure is much less than the $173 million that Summit Entertainment had predicted it would make last week and falls short of the $165 million that its predecessor, The Twilight Saga: New Moon had earned in its first weekend last November. Summit also predicted that the film would wind up with $181 million after receipts on Monday — a kind of quasi-holiday — are counted. That figure also appears to be doubtful. Coming in third was director M. Knight Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, which exceeded expectations, earning $40.65 million, despite some of the most slashing reviews of the year. Meanwhile, after two weeks at No. 1, Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 3 dropped to third place with about $30.2 million, bringing its total to $289 million, already making it the studio’s tenth highest-grossing release in history. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, total box-office revenue for the weekend came to $193 million, up 19 percent from the holiday weekend a year ago.
UPDATE:
Early today (Monday), the studios released their estimates for the four-day (Friday through Monday) holiday. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse‘s expected result is $82.55 million, which would bring its total from Wednesday to $175.29 million. Paramount’s The Last Airbender will wind up with $53.15 million to bring its gross from Thursday to $70.50 million, while Disney’s Toy Story 3 is expected to earn $42.22 million, pushing it past the $300-million mark to $301.05 million. Rounding out the top five are Sony’s Grown Ups, with $26.50 million for the four days and Fox’s Night & Day with $14 million for the four days.
The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo:
1. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, $68.5 million; 2. The Last Airbender, $40.65 million; 3. Toy Story 3, $30.1 million; 4. Grown Ups, $18.5 million; 5. Knight and Day, $9.9 million; 6. The Karate Kid, $8 million; 7. The A-Team, $2.9 million; 8. Get Him to the Greek, $1.2 million; 9. Shrek Forever After, $0.85million; 10. Cyrus, $0.65 million.
