Science Fiction Today

Breaking Dawn Opens with $283.5 Million

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part One bled $283.5 million from the worldwide box office since opening on Wednesday. In North America it earned $139.5 million in North America, with another $144 million 54 overseas markets.

That makes the film the fifth best opening ever in North America, right behind The Twilight Saga: New Moon’s $142.8 (the others are Spider-Man 3 with $151.1 million, The Dark Knight with $158.4 million and Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows – Part Two with $169.2 million). The $283.5 million worldwide opening (the 10th biggest ever) beat New Moon’s worldwide total of $274.9 million to become the best opening of the franchise so far.

The rabidly loyal audiences for Twilight films tend to show up in droves for its openings, but have generally faded away quickly. Assuming this is true for Breaking Dawn it is likely it will be hugely successful (estimates place it around the $700 million mark) but it not finish in the top 10 all time list of films.

Immortals, last weeks box office champ, dropped to third with $12.3 million in North America for a two week total of $53 million. That’s a steep decline of 62%, which is fairly common for genre films. Combined with foreign markets Immortals has earned $118.8 million against is $75 million production budget.