Nov 22, 2009 06:30 PM
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Wed Feb 10
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Behold the power of the sparkly vampire. How much money do you think Robert Pattinson's dead-eyed stare brought into the people who birthed Twlight: New Moon into this world? Well, you're probably short a few million.
Try $140.7 million on for size. Let that sink into your neck and suck your will to live and/or be any other movie.
[New Moon is] the third biggest three-day debut ever, according to early estimates from Hollywood.com Box Office. ("The Dark Knight" still retains the record for the biggest weekend debut with $158.4 million, and "Spider-Man 3" is second with $151.1 million.)
Good to know: Bats > Spiders > Sparkly Vampires.
80% of Twlight: New Moon's audience, according to the same report, were women. The other 20% breaks down like this:
10%: Pissed-Off Boyfriends
6%: Vampire Fetishists
3%: Overprotective Fathers
1%: Pissed-Off Gays
Sadly, the nu-vampire trend shows no signs of dying out any time soon. Twilight's basically trying to take over pop culture entirely, and pop culture is losing the war against Twilight. They even signed up hipster culture to be a part of this thing with indie rock bands on the soundtrack. These people are good: lure in early-adopters with crossover music that they're in the closet about enjoying (read: Death Cab for Cutie), and get them to "ironically" enjoy going to see Twilight movies until puff-paint shirts of Bella and Edward start appearing in Urban Outfitters everywhere. Genius.
So: what comes after the sparkly vampires in this weekend's box office take? $100M? $75M? $50M? Nope. But at least it involved a Vanity Fair writer.
Sandra Bullock continued her stellar year, with her true-life sports drama "The Blind Side" clearing an estimated $34.5 million for second place.
Michael Lewis! Attaboy! You took a, uh, nibble out of the sparkly vampires with the high fructose-sweetened version of what was pretty good source material. Now all we need to do is get Michael Lewis to write a screenplay about how vampires could be more profitable if they just cut the Mormon abstinence bullshit and got straight to Rated R-type bloodsucking (read: sex, gratuitous violence) while recruiting for their ranks cheaper vampires who'll suck more blood over the long run, and we've got a competitor. I've even got a great title in mind: Bloodsucking Blind Moneyballs. And it can star this guy:
Send an email to Foster Kamer, the author of this post, at foster@gawker.com.
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