"Eclipse" Headed For $180 Million By Monday

"Eclipse" Headed For $180 Million By Monday

Like the last two movies based on Stephe­nie Meyer’s fan favorite vam­pire books, “The Twi­light Sage: Eclipse,” which debuted Wednes­day, is set to draw hordes of young women this week­end and should gen­er­ate about $180 mil­lion in the U.S. and Canada by the national hol­i­day Monday.

Last November’s “The Twi­light Saga: New Moon” grossed $179 mil­lion in the U.S. and Canada by its sixth day and “Eclipse” will likely do at least that much by Mon­day and pos­si­bly as much as $200 mil­lion, said peo­ple who have seen pre­re­lease sur­veys. The new film has an advan­tage over its pre­de­ces­sor given the hol­i­day week­end, the fact that many stu­dents are off from school and can go to week­day mati­nees, and that it is the first “Twi­light” movie to play on pre­mium priced Imax screens.

As a result, total receipts for the new film will almost cer­tainly be very front-loaded, with most of its rev­enue com­ing in the first week.

“It’s a com­pressed period dur­ing which we expect to do a whole bunch of busi­ness,” said Sum­mit domes­tic dis­tri­b­u­tion pres­i­dent Richard Fay.

It remains to be seen, how­ever, whether “Eclipse” will sig­nif­i­cantly out­per­form the $297-million total gross of “New Moon,” or if it will sim­ply be the same “Twi­light” fans turn­ing out once again.

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