Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Peter Facinelli
Director: Bill Condon
Running Time: 117 mins
Certificate: 12
Release Date: March 12th, 2012
Director: Bill Condon
Running Time: 117 mins
Certificate: 12
Release Date: March 12th, 2012
It’s become almost de rigueur to slag off the Twilight movies, with the usual tack being to criticise the films for not fitting into the horror/action/thriller tropes that fanboys feel movies about vampires ought to fulfil. Behind that is a rather unpleasant sense that the anger at the franchise stems from fury that someone has dared make a fantasy movie that isn’t designed for the geeks who like to should loudly on the internet. Perhaps worst of all is that these angry young men don’t even seem to appreciate that 90% of the major movies are made for them, so the vitriol they pour at Twilight, simply because it’s popular but not for them, is actually quite ridiculous. [Read more…]
If Hollywood was hoping for a little pre-Christmas cheer, it didn’t get much over the weekend, after disappointing debuts for two movies there’d been high hopes for. Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows topped the chart with $40 million, more than $20 million down on the first movie’s take during Christmas 2009. It’s even lower than Tron: Legacy, which opened to weak reviews this weekend last year.
The idea that lightning can strike in the same place twice took a hit over the weekend, with New Year’s Eve, the star-studded follow-up to Valentine’s Day, topping the US box ofice but with a very tepid $13.7 million. With a cast that includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Lea Michele, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Hilary Swank and Seth Meyer, Warner Bros had been expecting it to make over $20 million, especially since it’s predecessor opened to $72 million 18 months ago.
It was quite an unusual week at the US box office, as no new movies at all made it into the top 10, with older film merely shifting around a little. Things remained exactly the same at the top though, with Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 in the number 1 slot, despite dropping 60% from last weekend to $16.9 million, while The Muppets stayed at number 2 with an $11.2 million weekend gross.
The question this weekend wasn’t whether Twilight: Breaking Dawn would have a good opening, it was just how big it would be. That question has now been answered with the latest in the series taking $139 million in its first three days in the US, and $283.5 million around the world. It’s the fifth biggest North American opening in history, but didn’t quite take the franchise record, which is still held by New Moon’s $142.8 million. It also scored the third biggest opening day gross ever, after the final Harry Potter and New Moon, taking $72 million in America on Friday.