The vampire romance "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" put the box office into orbit with a $142.8 million opening weekend. The sequel took in twice as much as "Twilight" in its first three days a year ago.
It was the third-best opening weekend ever.
The "New Moon" total climbed $2.1 million higher than distributor Summit Entertainment had estimated Sunday.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon" took in $72.7 million in its first day to break the single day domestic box office record previously held by "The Dark Knight," which had a $67.2 million opening day last year.
The Friday haul for the "Twilight" sequel includes a record $26.3 million from midnight screenings alone.
The movie, directed by Chris Weitz, continues the story of teen romance between a girl and a vampire (Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson), with the sequel adding a love triangle with a teen werewolf (Taylor Lautner). The movie is based on the second book in the popular series written by Stephanie Meyer. New to the cast was Dakota Fanning, who portrayed Jane, of the coven known as the Volturi who reside in Italy.
Locally Spotlight Theatres was filled with excitement as the show either sold out or come really close at every scheduled showing. Young people and adults alike even ran straight to Spotlight after school Friday to catch the 3:45 p.m. showing of the film which barely had a seat left in the house.
Due to the popularity and worry of bootleggers attempting to tape the movie for their own personal profit those in attendance were informed that all cell phones needed to be put away prior to the movies beginning. Spotlight Theatre managers even informed that any light picked up on sensor would result in that person being ejected from the movie.
The Top Ten movies for the weekend of November 20-22 were;
1. "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," Summit, $142,839,137
2. "The Blind Side, $34,119,372
3. "2012," Sony, $26,410,206
4. "Planet 51," Sony, $12,286,129
5. "Disney's a Christmas Carol," Disney, $12,275,024
6. "Precious: Based On the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire," Lionsgate, $10,881,772
7. "The Men Who Stare at Goats," Overture, $2,829,031
8. "Couples Retreat," Universal, $1,943,075
9. "The Fourth Kind," Universal, $1,747,085
10. "Michael Jackson's This Is It," Sony, $1,617,417
