We already brought you the news that The Twilight Saga: New Moon broke the record for best midnight opening (beating this past summer's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince), but while you were scarfing down popcorn and inhaling Robert Pattinson this weekend, the film broke a few other records too.
On Saturday it was announced that New Moon had successfully beat The Dark Knight's opening day record of $67 million with a whopping $72 million, which was due, in part, to the insanely large number of advance tickets sold right here on Fandango (more on that in a minute). Once New Moon broke both those records, everyone had their eyes peeled on the best opening weekend record, currently held by The Dark Knight with $158 million.
Unfortunately for you Twi-hards out there hoping for a sweep, New Moon failed to snatch the weekend record from Batman, but the film did finish with $140 million for the three-day, earning it the number three spot (replacing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) on the best opening weekend of all time list. The only two films ahead of New Moon are Spider-Man 3 and The Dark Knight, which, in all honesty, is pretty damn impressive.
Even more impressive was that Fandango was responsible for 18% of the film's domestic opening weekend gross, which is the company's largest share of the opening weekend box office for a feature film in wide release in Fandango history. How crazy is that? New Moon made box office history, Fandango made box office history…and all because of a couple of crazy love-sick teenagers named Bella and Edward. Who woulda thunk it?
At this pace The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (due out June 30th) could easily break that opening weekend record of $158 million should the hype and popularity of the franchise continue to grow (which it should). Of course, it'll be squaring off against some of summer's other heavyweights like Iron Man 2 and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, but I think it could take 'em.
What do you think?
