This past weekend’s box office belonged to ‘Twilight’. ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn pt. 1’, the fifth movie in the franchise, topped out sales with $139.5 million in domestic ticket sales over its extended five-day release. The film brought in another $144 million from the worldwide box office bringing its total to $283.5 million. That makes ‘Breaking Dawn pt. 1’ the fifth best domestic opening weekend ever behind ‘The Twilight Saga: New Moon’ ($142.8 million), ‘Spider-Man 3’ ($151.1 million), ‘The Dark Knight’ ($158.4 million) and ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt. 2’ ($169.2 million). However, in worldwide sales, ‘Breaking Dawn’ surpassed ‘New Moon’ which only earned $274.9 million at its launch.
Coming in second at the box office was the newly released kiddie film ‘Happy Feet Two’. The sequel to 2006’s ‘Happy Feet’ floundered with only a $22 million take. The original film brought in $42.7 million on its opening weekend. This week will probably see the dancing penguins sink further in the charts with ‘The Muppets’, ‘Hugo’, and ‘Arthur Christmas’ all releasing to take a cut of the family film cash.
The rest of the top five box office money maker list is rounded out by last week’s top three. Relativity Media’s ‘Immortals’ brought in another $12.3 million bringing the two week total for the Greek god tale to $53 million. The Adam Sandler cross-dressing comedy ‘Jack and Jill’ took the number 4 spot with $12 million in sales in its second week. Dreamworks’ ‘Puss in Boots’, now its fourth week of release, brought in another $10.1 million for a total take of $122 million thus far.
The only other new release to even breach to top 10 this week was ‘The Descendants’ from Fox Searchlight Pictures. ‘The Descendants’ stars George Clooney as a rich land baron who is trying to rebuild his family after his wife dies in a boating accident. The film, which was only released in 29 theaters still managed the number 10 spot with $1.3 million.
