Kimberley French / Summit EntertainmentEclipse didn't break more records. It didn't top New Moon. It didn't have to.
The $68 million Twilight Saga installment upped its five-day, worldwide haul to an estimated $261.2 million, per the latest numbers.
And, oh, yeah, it won the weekend, too.
Friday-Sunday estimates show Eclipse grossing $69 million, and topping the critic-defying Last Airbender, which finished a respectable second in the box-office standings with an apparently disaster-averting $40.7 million.
Eclipse and Last Airbender are expected to take hits today as moviegoers ditch the indoors for the great Fourth of July outdoors. As an added bonus, though, they'll have the Monday work-day holiday with which to fatten up.
Drilling down into the numbers:
• After five days, New Moon stood at $164.7 million domestically, while Eclipse is at $161.7 million. Summit Entertainment exec Richie Fay thinks Eclipse has a shot at becoming the top-grossing Twilight movie. "It's tough to call," Fay said today, "but I think all indications are that it will be somewat bigger."
• The Twilight movies continue to grow on guys. Eclipse's opening weekend audience was 35 percent male, up from the 20 percent turn out for New Moon and the 18 percent for the original Twilight.
• Eclipse's Friday-Sunday should make it the third-biggest Fourth of July weekend grosser, after Spider-Man 2 and the first Transformers.
• It was close, but Eclipse's opening weekend just did top its opening day: $69 million to $68.5 million.
• After its Wednesday debut, Eclipse's start broke down like this: a $24.2 million Thursday; a $28.5 million Friday; a $23.9 million Saturday; and, a $16.6 million Sunday.
• Overseas, Eclipse raked in $100.2 million.
• Since opening Thursday, The Last Airbender has grossed $57.1 million domestically, per Box Office Mojo stats. Foreign grosses, which will be the ultimate key for the $150 million movie, weren't known.
• If you saw a movie this weekend, odds are three-in-four that you saw either Eclipse, Last Airbender or Toy Story 3 ($30.2 million; $289 million overall).
• Worldwide, Toy Story 3 is at a towering $439.8 million.
• In their second weekends, Adam Sandler's Grown Ups ($18.5 million; $77.1 million overall) and Tom Cruise's and Cameron Diaz's Knight and Day ($10.2 million; $45.5 million overall) held up OK, which was good enough for the Sandler comedy, and not good enough for the Cruise-Diaz flick.
• In case you were wondering, a poor Fox exec whom you've never heard of, but should admire nonetheless, insists Knight and Day should be blamed on him, and not Cruise.
• Granted it didn't break $1 million for the weekend, but the John C. Reilly-Jonah Hill indie comedy Cyrus ($770,256; $1.5 million overall) did crack the Top 10 despite playing at only 77 theaters. Or 4,391 fewer than the record-setting Eclipse.
• Jake Gyllenhaal's Prince of Persia ($670,000) dropped out of the Top 10 after five weekends that failed to wow critics or much of anybody else—and so what? The $200 milllion behemoth was a hit in the rest of the world, grossing $319.1 million overall.
Here's a complete look at the weekend's top-grossing films, per Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, $69 million
- The Last Airbender, $40.7 million
- Toy Story 3, $30.2 million
- Grown Ups, $18.5 million
- Knight and Day, $10.2 million
- The Karate Kid, $8 million
- The A-Team, $3 million
- Get Him to the Greek, $1.2 million
- Shrek Forever After, $799,000
- Cyrus, $770,256