Prophecy: Twilight

By BOP Staff

October 31, 2008

The beautiful people, the beautiful people.

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Les Winan: I see it doing $50+ million minimum. $75 million wouldn't shock me. My wife, sister, sister-in-law and grandmother are all counting the days.

Daron Aldridge: I fall very much into that over 18 demographic that had never heard of the title, series or author until it showed up on the cover of my Entertainment Weekly. This reminds me of the Eragon from a couple years ago, which was also based upon a novel that skewed young (regardless of the arguably derivative literary merits of Christopher Paolini), opened in the winter holiday season, and had questionable quality but as rabid fandom. That one underperformed domestically opening to $23.2 million. Adjusted for inflation, Eragon earned $25.1 million. So, I can see this one outperforming Tolkien-lite but not by much. I am going with about a guess of a $35 million opening.




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Jim Van Nest: Until about three months ago, I'd never heard of Twilight. I met one 14 year-old girl (a friend's daughter, ya pervs) who is 100% addicted. Since that day, it's everywhere I go. The best comparisons I can come up with are the Potter series and possibly The Da Vinci Code...though both of these don't fit AS well as they're WAY bigger than Bella Swan. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone opened over $90 million in 2001, but there were already four books and they'd been in circulation for four years or so. Da Vinci opened to $77 million, but it had the controversy thing going for it, as well as Tom Hanks and it skewed toward people who can actually drive themselves to theaters.

Aside from all that is the trailer for Twilight, which definitely left me just "whelmed." They could have told me it was a commercial for the latest CW show and I'd have believed it. Based on the luke-warm trailer and the opening takes of some books that are MUCH larger than this one, I can't help but think that this opens in the $33 million range, with a ceiling of about $40 million. While this has a gazillion teenage girls excited, I just don't think that's a broad enough demographic to push this into the upper echelon of book adaptation openings.

Pete Kilmer: After talking with some of my female friends who are teachers and librarians I think this movie will hit at least $50 million for an opening weekend. All of their friends are super excited about it.


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