Corona | Coming Attractions

When The Twilight Saga: New Moon had a huge Friday at the box office no one was thinking that the sequel could earn less than $100 million dollars in its opening weekend. Now the tallies are starting to come in and estimates are placing New Moon with a whopping $140.7 million dollar haul from Friday to Sunday. Broken down over each of the three days, New Moon grossed $72.7m on Friday (including from its midnight screenings), another $$43.2m on Saturday and then its forecasted to earn $24.8m today.

As it stands now New Moon has grossed 73% of Twilight's total domestic theatrical run. There's a strong likelihood that New Moon is what the industry calls "front-loaded", meaning that the huge ticket sales for Friday and Saturday were purchased by fans and the film could see a 60%-70% dropoff next weekend. However, even if that scenario does play out New Moon will easily break $200 million dollars domestic. It's already earned $118 million from international venues. Any way that you slice it New Moon is a monster hit and now has the new record of having the third-largest Friday-Saturday-Sunday opening of all-time.

If the movie at number one earned $140 million dollars then whatever film coming in second place can't look like a winner, right? Surprisingly, in the case of Sandra Bullock's new drama The Blind Side the answer to that question is a resounding no. The Blind Side opened with a very healthy take of $34.5 million dollars, a personal best for Bullock. Earlier this year The Proposal opened to $33 million and went on to gross $164 million domestic. If The Blind Side follows a similar path then Bullock could be viewed by Hollywood as a new major league player. I'm betting that after this weekend Sandra's asking price for starring in a film could now soar as high as $20 million.

2012, the latest cinematic portrayal of the end of the world, also didn't disappoint in its second weekend out. Add another $26.5 million to its total (which brings it now to $108m) and 2012 is halfway there to recouping its $200 million dollar budget.

Not so impressive is the opening for Sony Pictures Animation's Planet 51. Even with a talented cast providing the voices for its characters Planet 51 could only muster a $12.6m opening. Hey Sony people, at least there's always next week.

Fifth spot goes to A Christmas Carol, Robert Zemeckis' motion captured holiday card ($12.2m new, $79.8m total.) By adding on another 450+ screens Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire elevated its take to $11m new and $21m total. But then the drop is a large one for The Men Who Stare at Goats; $2.7m new this week, almost a $10 million dollar difference between its placement at #7 and Precious at #6.

Like a case of H1N1 Couples Retreat is still hanging around the top ten and won't go away ($1.9m new, $105m total). At #9 is The Fourth Kind ($1.7m new, $23.3m total) and coming in tenth place is Law Abiding Citizen ($1.6m new, $70m total.)

With American Thanksgiving arriving in the middle of the week the multiplexes will be adding new product on Wednesday. Disney's newest princess arrives with the November 25th release of The Princess and the Frog, Viggo Mortensen takes his son on a trip down The Road, there's a Ninja Assassin in the house and John Travolta and Robin Williams are a pair of Old Dogs. Carve that bird and debate with your family members whether you think vampires should sparkles in the sun or not.