Everyone knew going into this weekend that The Twilight Saga: New Moon would be huge. But did anyone expect it to be Dark Knight huge? Nikki Finke is reporting that New Moon may have made as much as $24 million from midnight screenings last night, beating both The Dark Knight's $18.4 million and Harry Potter's $22.2 million. As in, holy god, that's a whole lot of money.
Summit Entertainment hasn't released their official numbers yet, but it's hard to imagine this number being too, too far off. The thing that will be interesting to watch it what happens from here. Harry Potter debuted with gigantic midnight screening numbers, but went on to only bring in a modest $77 million (modest for a movie its size, at least) on opening weekend. The Dark Knight, on the other hand, turned that $18 million into an insane $158 million opening weekend. Which will New Moon be? I'd lean harder on the Harry Potter model-- it's not like people uninterested in the books or the earlier movie will suddenly want to see this because everyone else is. But then again, Twihards have proven time and time again it's bad to underestimate them, so we'll see how this plays out.
