New Moon rising and teen vampires suck bucks
The Age
Tuesday November 24, 2009
STEP aside, Harry Potter. The vampires have taken over. Jaws were dropping yesterday at the record box office takings for The Twilight Saga: New Moon.The sequel easily smashed the record for an opening weekend in Australian cinemas, taking $16.01 million. Left in its wake was the $14.3 million taken by the previous record holder €” Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.The takings €” equivalent to more than a million tickets selling in four days €” came as cinema executives reported some fans had seen New Moon two or three times over the weekend.The movie, based on the second of Stephenie Meyer's four teenage vampire books, was always going to open strongly after the success of the original Twilight.But the chief executive of Hoyts Distribution, Robert Slaviero, said the first weekend was "way beyond our expectations".Twilight took $5.4 million from 306 screens on its opening weekend last year. New Moon, which also stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, opened on 530 screens €” more than a quarter of all the screens around the country.The general manager for film at Event Cinemas, Peter Cody, described the takings as amazing. "We knew that the public interest in the film was at unprecedented levels by the number of advance tickets we sold," he said. "But even knowing that, we've still been taken by surprise."In North America, New Moon took $US140.7 million ($A153.8 million), also well above industry expectations. But it was only the third-highest opening weekend €” behind The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 3.
© 2009 The Age