By now we're all well aware that The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 had a very good weekend at the box office, making $139 million on opening weekend to have the fifth-best opening of all time. But the more interesting story might actually be in the breakdown of who was buying those tickets. According to the demographic numbers over at Vulture, 80% of the Twilight audience was female-- I know, I know, please try to control your shock. The actual surprise, though, is the age of the women who were seeing it. 60% of Breaking Dawn's audience was over the age of 21 and under 25; by comparison, only half of the audiences for New Moon and Eclipse were over 21.
Given that both of those movies came out several years ago, it seems safe to conclude that the Twilight audience is aging with the movies, without bringing in a significant number of younger fans to join in their fandom. Compare that to the Harry Potter films, which throughout their 10-year run consistently brought in kids, to the point that the kids seeing Deathly Hallows Part 2 in theaters weren't even born when Sorcerer's Stone came out in 2001. Where Harry Potter turned out to be a long-lasting phenomenon, these numbers might indicate that Twilight is more like a fad, intense and memorable for the people that are part of it but unable to translate for anyone who comes after.
After all, it was only in 2008 that Twilight was first released, and with Breaking Dawn Part 2 coming next year that will make a compact four years that The Twilight Saga ruled the box office-- long enough for a girl to fall in love with the books at 13 and grow out of them once she's a senior in high school. Of course, the aging demographics don't really matter when you're getting the films out that quickly, and I guess that's part of the strategy. None of this information will keep the next Breaking Dawn installment from being a huge success when it comes next year, but this might mean that 3 years from now, 12-year-old girls will have no idea what Twilight is. I think almost all of us can agree that's a good thing.
