Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
November 21, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 became the fifth largest opening weekend of all time as it opened to $138.1 million, slightly behind New Moon's $142.8 million. Its global take of $283.5 million is a franchise best to date. Give us your thoughts on all things Twilight.
Bruce Hall: There's not much to say about the numbers. Impressive. Very impressive. As for the rest of it, I could certainly make fun of the hordes of gangly, awkward teens, lonesome tweens, emotionally stunted housewives and other questionable people who came out this weekend to support the film. In a way, I suppose I just did. I won't lie. I hate Twilight; I think they're terrible books, I think they're terrible movies and I think that the franchise as a whole in no way contributes a single useful thing to the betterment of the human condition.
But it makes people happy. Lots of people. All too often these days when we see that many people gathered together for something they're living in tents in New York's Central Park or being shot at in Damascus. Not to get all heavy on you here, but it's an increasingly ugly world out there. Anything that makes this many people squeal with delight can't be all bad. Boy, I suppose that quote will come back to haunt me one day...
Matthew Huntley: Twilight's popularity--be it the books or the movies--still astounds me. And since I'm not the target audience, I've simply accepted I'll never understand its appeal, just like I'll never understand the appeal of most WB/CW shows, daytime soap operas or reality television (I think these and Twilight generally share the same fanbase). It's just not for me. With that said, given its popularity, I'm not at all surprised by its box office numbers, though I'm thankful it didn't beat the far superior (in my opinion) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II, even though Breaking Dawn, Part II still has a chance.
And despite Twilight not bettering the human condition like Bruce said, I'm grateful that it at least injects the box office with some much-needed vigor. We all wish its quality was just as high as its box office figures, but hey, we'll take what we can get. And on a critical note, I did see the movie, and while it is slow, moderately boring and poorly acted (the usual characteristics for this series), it did show signs of loosening up a little and actually being entertaining. Granted, they are small signs, but at least they're there. Who knows, maybe the last movie will be recommendable.
Brett Beach: I worked my way through the films of Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse, but have no desire to see BD 1 or 2, even with very purplish plot points and one of the more unconventional pregancies and births in cinematic history. With what little I know of the plot of the last book (i.e. from the Wikipedia link), it seems as if the truly exciting stuff (wedding, honeymoon, bed-breaking body-bruising honeymoon sex, vampire baby being born) is all in this installment. What's left for the final two hours? I think that the fact this essentially held, but didn't add to the midnight and weekend grosses of the last two installments shows that the audience hasn't grown, and unlike a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, I can't imagine a huge return of people now sitting on the sideline, just because the next one will be the last film. Still, near $140 million is a huge figure. There is nothing about it to sneeze at, not even a small a-choo!
Shalimar Sahota: I've not seen any of the Twilight films, so I'm probably not qualified to offer any thoughts on this, except to say, "Hey, that's huge! Well done Summit Entertainment." As an outsider looking in, the film is (still?) dealing with an awkward love triangle, there's a wedding, bed-breaking sex, having a baby... supposedly all the things young girls think about. For them, it's just like real life, except there's the addition of vampires and werewolves, which gives it that extra zing. Hell, if the Sex and the City movies had vampires and werewolves, they would have made over $100 million on opening weekend for sure.
Reagen Sulewski: At this point, I'm treating the Twilight franchise like a high-grade fever - it's just got to burn itself out and then we'll be done with it for good. Luckily we've only got one more edition of this should-be-a-bad-CW series to go. This is going to be one of those things where people 15 years from now are going to look back and think "were you just all on drugs, or something"?
David Mumpower: I love how cantankerous and male we sound when we talk about Twilight. Even most of the women on the site hate it. Out of our revolving door of 25+ contributors, I can only think of two offhand who enjoy the series. That alone tells me that we have the same ability to talk about Twilight as we do about Egyptian hieroglyphics, maybe even less. I don't know all of your Rosetta Stone-inclusive hobbies. What I think when I see this opening weekend performance is "expected". When the announcement was made that Breaking Dawn would be split into two films a la Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I instantly recognized this as a cash grab. While the story developments in the final Harry Potter installment require more than two and a half hours of screen time, even at 756 pages, Breaking Dawn is easily reduced to a few key moments. the decision to split it was predicated upon the fact that Harry Potter earned an extra billion dollars worldwide by having a second movie. Why shouldn't Twilight try to pull off the same accounting feat? Shaving with Occam's Razor, more films means more money. This opening weekend result of $138.1 million domestically, $283.5 million worldwide is only half a paycheck. The other half arrives in a year. This is clever business even if it does mean stretching out the worst pop culture phenomenon of our lifetime for another 12 months.
Edwin Davies: Everyone else has said pretty much everything that I thought about this; it's a very impressive figure, and at the very least it means that we can finally talk about a film that is a breakout success for the first time in ages, and it's clear from this that the audience for these films have not grown beyond the second film, considering their eerily similar totals. (A trend that I fully expect to see continue to the final grosses, since this one will probably end up with around $300 million as both New Moon and Eclipse did.) I do think that the final entry in the series has a chance at beating Harry Potter, though, if only because the audience will have reached such a fever pitch by then that the faithful will be out in even more force than they have been the last few times out. However, by that point it won't be trying to beat Harry Potter's opening weekend record, but The Dark Knight Rises' record, which it may struggle to do.
We wonder what the next generation's vampire fad will be. Dracula, Nosferatu, Lestat, Edward...?
Kim Hollis: Do you think this opening is the limit of the franchise, or do you think the final film in the Twilight series will open larger than the rest and possibly approach the opening weekend record?
Bruce Hall: I think that the Twilight fanbase is an incredibly obsessed and passionate group of...um...people...the likes of which we probably haven't seen since the glory days of Star Trek. Those would be the people whose devotion stretched a 79 episode show about an Alpha Male, a dysfunctional alien and a pissed off doctor in space into the Keith Richards of science fiction franchises. I'm not sure even Team Twilight has that kind of pull but I guarantee you they will turn out in organized fashion in an attempt to make the last film as successful as possible. The truly curious thing about Twihards is that like their close cousin the Tebowmaniac, they seem to take the backlash very personally.
Matthew Huntley: There's no doubt in my mind the final film in the franchise will have the biggest opening weekend of the series, but will it beat Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II? I doubt it, but Summit will undoubtedly market it the same way Warner Bros. did HP, by making us all too aware it is the last installment and urging us to be part of a cultural phenomenon (which Twilight arguably is).
Brett Beach: I broached a little of this in the first question, but I do think the midnight record is a safe bet to fall, the single/opening day a little less likely, and the opening weekend probably not, especially if Part 2 isn't going to be IMAX/3D. For comparison HP and the DH Part 2 started with $170 million and still finished with well under $400 million. I think Breaking Dawn Part 2 will come close to $350 million.
Shalimar Sahota: I imagine that the final film will open higher than any of the other films in the franchise, but given where Breaking Dawn Part I ended up, it won't be by a huge margin. The record set by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II will be safe, unless Warners bests it themselves with The Dark Knight Rises.
Jim Van Nest: I also think Breaking Dawn, Part 2 will be the largest opening of the franchise and I think it will approach Deathly Hallows Part 2. The one thing Harry Potter had going for it that Twilight doesn't is the length of the series. Twilight opened in 2008. BD, Part 2 will touch down in 2012. That's five films in five years. Impressive, yes...but it's not the same as an eight film series released over a decade. In the time between Sorcerer's Stone and DH Part 2, a whole new generation was introduced to Harry Potter. Kids who were still in the crib when Potter 1 was in theaters were in line for midnight showings of Potter 8. That is why, in my opinion, BD Part 2 won't keep pace. Not because it's not gaining fans, it just hasn't had the longevity to gain enough fans to pass up Harry. Whatever the final tally is though, I look forward to the BOP final recap of the Twilight phenomenon next Thanksgiving!
Reagen Sulewski: Considering that it's already slipped from two years ago's opening, I wouldn't take it for granted at all that it'll beat its own franchise record. It's certainly possible, but if we're already shedding viewers in the final bend, there's no telling how many might get shaken loose before the last stretch. Summit will go all out to try and get it, for sure, but wanting and having are two different things.
David Mumpower: I concur with Reagen's assessment that this is not a foregone conclusion. We are looking at what happened with Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2 wherein the film spiked from $125.0 million to $169.2 million in its final opening weekend. That's a single instance rather than a blueprint. Yes, Twilight's producers are hoping for this result but there is a key difference here. $125.0 million was the best opening for the Harry Potter franchise by over $20 million. There was growth behavior demonstrated.
As staggering as Twilight's box office performance has been (and there are not enough superlatives in the English language to express how spectacularly it's succeeded financially), it is on the decline in terms of first five days of box office. New Moon established the standard with $164.7 million while Eclipse fell off a bit to $157.6 million. At best, Breaking Dawn Part 1 matches New Moon. We are faced with the distinct possibility that as passionate as Twilight fans are, we have reached a point of diminishing returns. The audience is not growing and only unprecedented box office inflation is keeping the numbers in line. I do not see an opening weekend far in excess of New Moon's $142.8 million as a certainty.
Edwin Davies: As I said in regards to the previous question, I fully expect Breaking Dawn Part Deux to break the franchise record and come close to beating Harry Potter's. Whilst I agree with Jim that the main advantage Potter had was the amount of time that the franchise had to develop a fanbase, I think that Twilight has the advantage since its fanbase has formed more quickly and is more rabid in its devotion. I know that there are a lot of hardcore Harry Potter fans out there, but they always seem to be in the minority, whereas EVERY Twilight fan seems to be hardcore at this point, and that level of obsession is what makes me think that, come this time next year, we will see people taking in multiple screenings over the weekend as these poor, misguided souls say goodbye to their paper-thin heroes, in the process putting Breaking Dawn Part 2 perilously close to breaking the opening weekend record.