Box Office Recap: Breaking Dawn Performs a Vampire C-Section on Moviegoers’ Wallets

Summit Entertainment

You knew Twilight was going to earn boatloads this weekend. But how did films not starring vampires do? Terrible. Below, your Top Five movies.

1. Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (weekend: $139.5 million)
Breaking Dawn couldn’t quite top the Twilight franchise’s previous biggest debut (New Moon opened to $142.8 million in 2009), but it did set the record for best-ever North American first weekend for a movie in which a vampire delivers a demon baby via C-section with his own teeth (discounting inflation). Eighty percent of Dawn‘s audience was female, which is less than we might have guessed.

2. Happy Feet Two (weekend: $22 million)
Despite a voice cast that includes Matt Damon and Brad Pitt, and a boost from 3D tickets, this dancing-penguins sequel (budget: $135 million) opened to half of what the 2006 original did — and next weekend, families will presumably opt for The Muppets. Happy Feet Three: probably not happening.

3. Immortals (weekend: $12.2 million; cumulative: $52.9)
Tarsem Singh’s $75 million-budgeted 300 copy is shaping up to be a modest disappointment, despite all the money the production saved on writers and shirts.

4. Jack and Jill (weekend: $12 million; cumulative: $41 million)
Adam Sandler’s Razzie-contending stinker is technically a letdown for Sony and Adam Sandler (whose movies usually do way better, no matter their Rotten Tomatoes scores), but we’re impressed it’s earned as much as it has. People spent $41 million on this thing? Really? Didn’t they see the trailer?

5. Puss in Boots (weekend: $10.7 million; cumulative: $122.3 million)
This Shrek spinoff just installed another swimming pool in Antonio Banderas’ backyard.

Filed Under: Box office, Jack and Jill, Puss In Boots, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1