"Sparkly Vampires Beat The Joker"

This weekend was the grand ole' opening of Twilight Saga: The New Moon. Here's a few things that happened according to the people over at Film School Rejects:

1. The Friday haul of $72 million is the biggest Friday gross of all time, EVER. It tops the $67.2 million record of The Dark Knight from last year.

2. The midnight sales, again, were the highest of all time. $26.27 million at 3,514 locations, beating the record previously held by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which made $22.2 million at 3,003 earlier this year.

3. The $140 million weekend is the highest domestic opening of all time for a non-summer release.

4. Let’s not forget the pre-sale records set by MovieTickets.com and Fandango.com for advance sales.

5. It is also the highest opening weekend haul of 2009 and the top opening haul for the first three days of a release (beating Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’s $127,851,614 for its Wednesday-Thursday-Friday rollout).

Upon reading it out loud, one of my roommates couldn't believe that "sparkly vampires beat the joker" in an indifferent form of disapproval (and disgust). I responded that you know a.) it's a large franchise, b.) it has amazing marketing outlets (morning news shows, all sorts of conventions, etc.) and c.) it really is a hit or miss.

After thinking more about it, I just thought about the demographics. The Twilight franchise is similar to Harry Potter in demos for example; they attract the young tweens and the teens mostly, and the usual handfuls of adults. However, Twilight brings in older crowds, those 18-34s. I'm definitely more of an HP fan at heart, but I enjoyed the Twilight books (as mormon as they are; i.e. Bella is a twat of a character in most if not all literature, more so than Tess of the D'Urbervilles) and I like the movies.

I can admit that Twilight is a lot hotter and sexier than HP, including a pretty attractive cast. This is of course all subtle enough to keep the movies PG-13. And let's consider the fact that it's a romance, too. People are attracted to that, well at least grown women, teenybopper college students and crying t(w)eens, and they are a large part of the world's population. PERIOD. Let's not forget those wonderful gay men who pine over Rob and Taylor and every other shirtless boy in the series. Clearly, you can kind of see how the Twilight franchise has a broader scope in terms of demographics: girls, women and men.

But let's bring it back to the The Dark Knight: action flick, PG-13, skews guys, amazing cast, amazing franchise, amazing marketing, summer release. Yes people will flock to see it! But let's face it. This business is all about the hit-or-miss, that most industry-goers tend to forget. Both movies had a great opening weekend, so in the eyes of a distributor/producer, they're both hits. Some will think, "oh, NM made more money opening weekend than TDK, that means NM is better." What?! NO. There are so many theories and supposed formulas on how to really make a bangin' profit off of a movie, especially a franchise, but a lot of it is timing, let alone all the market research companies do to figure out how to promote their films.

There is no way in hell I can prove how and why New Moon made more money in its opening weekend than The Dark Knight and tons of other awesome movies. Lance Krall totally tells it how it is in an Arts Review interview, "no one out here knows what the hell they’re doing." True story; write it down. It pretty much applies to most professions.

PS - I'm on Team Jacob.