New Moon now at $188.2M domestic, #3 opening week of all time

Looks like "New Moon" is raking in a lot of money after being in theaters for only 7 days according to ProNetworks.org.

Look for another #1 showing at the box office, with predictions of $60M being about average among analysts. Will they be proven wrong again?


UPDATE 7:00 PM FRIDAY 11/27:

Thursday's box office estimates are in. The Twilight Saga: New Moon took in another $9.2M from 4042 locations with a per screen average of $2286 to kick off the four-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend. This increases the film's domestic total to $188.2M through its first seven days of release. The current worldwide total is $320.3M. There have been no new international numbers all week so the actual total should be much higher when Summit releases updated figures this Sunday.

With Friday-Thursday totals counted, The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($188.2M) had the third largest opening week of all time, behind The Dark Knight ($238.6M) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($196M), and ahead of Spider-Man 3 ($182M). It also puts New Moon in sixth place on the all-time list of the first six days of wide release whenever they occurred, not just weekends. With just a few million to go to reach Twilight's total domestic box office take of $192,769,854, after today's numbers come in New Moon will have made more in eight days than Twilight did in its entire 147-day run from November 21, 2008 to April 2, 2009. Although the film was toppled from first place on Thursday by Warner Bros.' football-themed The Blind Side with $9.5M, New Moon is expected to take the weekend.


UPDATE 3:00 PM THURSDAY 11/26:

Wednesday's box office estimates are in. The Twilight Saga: New Moon took in another $14.3M from 4024 locations with a per screen average of $3,554. This increases the film's domestic total to $179M. The current worldwide total is $311.1M.


UPDATE 1:00 PM WEDNESDAY 11/25:

Tuesday's box office numbers are in. The Twilight Saga: New Moon took in another $11,328,695 from 4024 locations with a per theater average of $2815. This increases the film's domestic total to $164.7M and was the 11th highest grossing Tuesday for any film, 3rd highest since Christmas 2007. This also puts New Moon in sixth place on the all-time list of the first five days of wide release whenever they occurred, not just weekends. New Moon is now the #10 film of the year on the domestic charts and the 16th highest grossing film in the world. The current worldwide total is $296.8M.

There is no doubt the film will pass $300M worldwide today, if it hasn't already. Overseas numbers are slow to come in.


UPDATE 11:00 PM TUESDAY 11/24:

THEATER COUNTS: Normally issued on Thursdays, numbers have just been released for the weekend of November 27-29. New Moon adds 18 theaters for a total of 4042. This is by far the largest release of the weekend, with second place going to holdover 2012 at 3444 and the new Old Dogs at 3425.


UPDATE 4:00 PM TUESDAY 11/24:

Monday's box office numbers are in. The Twilight Saga: New Moon took in another $10,506,486 from 4024 locations, with a per theater average of $2611. This increases the film's domestic total to $153.3M and was the 14th highest grossing non-holiday Monday for any film, 4th highest since July 2008. This also places New Moon in sixth place on the all-time list of the first four days of wide release whenever they occurred, not just weekends. The current worldwide total, adding in $132.1M from overseas markets, is $285.4M.


UPDATE 4:00 PM MONDAY 11/23:

The final domestic box office numbers for opening weekend show that The Twilight Saga: New Moon took in $142.8M. This is the official tally which, including the actual number for Sunday, has been revised upward by $2.1M from the previously announced $140.7M. This also results in an increase in the per theater average from $34,965 to $35,497.

Here is the reason why this overall number is higher than the one reported by the industry yesterday. After the Saturday box office totals came in on Sunday morning, the studio estimated what Sunday would be and came up with a weekend projection. That is standard industry procedure. Of course, Sunday and weekend figures can only be estimated at that point. The actual Sunday numbers weren't known until today (posted below). The actual numbers that come in on Monday are usually not too far off from the estimates made on Sunday. They usually adjust slightly up or down but are rarely far off. In this case, the number was underestimated, meaning that the percentage drop from Saturday to Sunday was smaller than anticipated and more people went to see New Moon than had been predicted. So the final number is revised upward by $2.1M. That may not sound like a lot, but think about this: of the top 90 films out this weekend, 83 made less than $2.1M.

After its record-shattering $72.7M first day Friday, there was a 41.8% drop from Friday to Saturday when it took in $42.3M. This was slightly larger than the percentage decrease Twilight had one year ago (down 40.8% Saturday). However, a smaller than anticipated 34.2% drop going into Sunday brought in another $27.85M for a weekend total of $142.8M and a per theater average of $35,497. Of the top 13 films only two had smaller Saturday to Sunday drops. Of the 118 movies reporting numbers this weekend, New Moon took in more money than all the other 117 films combined.

The reason for the less-than-anticipated drop on Sunday (as well as the surprising weekend box office overall) will no doubt be examined by everyone in the industry, but one interesting fact emerges. A film's box office decrease from Saturday to Sunday is generally affected most by word-of-mouth (or lack of it) and reviews. In the case of New Moon, the critics were quite unkind. Yet the public still continued to head to the theater in droves, more than even the studio had anticipated. Let's call it "the New Moon factor." From this point on, when a moviegoer is excited about a forthcoming film and is told, "but the reviews are awful," they can simply say, "look at New Moon."

This new number is the one that will go down in the record books, although it doesn't change the movie's position on the charts or add or remove any of the records it broke. The film stands in third place for all-time opening weekends, behind The Dark Knight ($158.4M) and Spider-Man 3 ($151.1M) and ahead of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($135.6M).