'NEW MOON' SHREDS MOVIE RECORDS!

'NEW MOON' SHREDS MOVIE RECORDS! Opens To $80M Biggest Friday/Single Day (Including All-Time $26.2M Midnights); 'Twilight' Sequel Tracking $135M Weekend

  BREAKING NEWS! SATURDAY 2:45AM UPDATe: "The night definitely belongs to Twilight." This is what my Hollywood insiders are telling me early this morning after NEW MOON's late Friday night numbers came in. It debuted to around $80 million from 4,024 North American theaters. This shatters both previous All-Time Friday and Single Day records of $67 million set by 2008's The Dark Knight. So Batman was beaten by the Twilight sequel's vampires and werewolves which won't sit well with the superhero-loyal moviegoing community. But Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight Saga" novels -- New Moon is the second in the series -- are now proving as much of a phenomenon as comic books for source material at the box office. Friday's total included New Moon's $26.27M in 12:01AM screenings from 3,514 theaters. That set a new midnight opening record, smashing The Dark Knight's $18.4M set on July 18, 2008, and Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince's $22.2M set on July 15, 2009. Summit Entertainment's official full-day Friday figures and weekend estimates probably won't be announced until after 9 AM (Pacific Time). But my insiders are tracking New Moon for a massive $135M weekend depending on how big a drop there is between Friday's records and Saturday's results. I hear it logged an "A-" CinemaScore which should mitigate. That number won't break the all-time opening weekend record set by The Dark Knight of $158.4M in 2008 or by Spider-Man 3 of $151.M in 2007. But it's neck-and-neck with the 3rd place finish of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest of $135.1M of 2006. But all three of those movies were released in the summer, unlike New Moon which should easily score the biggest Non-Summer Friday-Saturday-Sunday (3-Day) Weekend opening ever. (Note that none of these numbers have been adjusted for inflation or higher ticket costs or theater counts.) Amazing, especially since Hollywood thought New Moon might, repeat might, do Iron Man numbers of around $100M.