Twilight Rules the Box Office; Sequel Confirmed
Thanks to a $70.6 million opening weekend, the teen protagonists of vamp romance “>Twilight will definitely be returning for at least one sequel. According to Yahoo! News, Summit Entertainment is proceeding with production of New Moon based on the second book (review here) in Stephenie Meyer’s internationally best-selling series.
Whether or not Catherine Hardwicke, who now, thanks to Twilight, becomes the female director with the biggest opening ever, will return is another question altogether. Hardwicke has said, “I want to be sure that it’s going to be done right. I don’t want to rush into it. It’s not like Friday the 13th or Halloween; you can’t just do it super fast and knock another one out. I want to understand their plans and all that.” Since the film easily surpassed the industry’s projected box office take of around $50 million, you can’t blame Summit for wanting to strike while the iron is hot. They only just commenced operations in April, 2007, and Twilight (which cost $37 million to produce) is their sixth release.
I think Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers, summed up the Twilight phenomenon best: “Teen girls rule the earth. If you look back at the Hannah Montana movie, how well that did, and now this movie, the teen girl audience will never be ignored again or underestimated. It was always teen boys who were the coveted ones, but someone finally caught on to the idea that girls love movies, too, and if you create something that they’re into, that they’re passionate about, they will come out in big numbers and drive the box office.”
Lord help us all.
Got news? Click here to submit it!
Celebrate … or commiserate … in the Dread Central forums!
Categorized:
