Twilight Tickets Selling Out

Published by Jeff Leins on November 9, 2008

Update: More on Twilight’s box office totals from opening day. Click here.

Midnight on Halloween morning advanced tickets went on sale on Fandango for Twilight, the vampire sensation smashing into theaters November 21.

Six days later nearly 100 showtimes were sold out for opening day. The PG-13 movie accounted for over 63% of the ticket sales on Fandango, the nation’s largest online ticket booth. It outpaced High School Musical 3 in advanced sales at the same two week gap, which went on to top the box office two weekends in a row.

The same goes for MovieTickets.com, where the movie is 34% of all sales on the site, ahead of the new James Bond, Quantum of Solace, opening a week earlier.

This week’s Entertainment Weekly article says an adaptation of the second novel, New Moon, relies on the performance of Twilight at the box office. EW and director Catherine Hardwicke estimate a $150 million gross will convince the studio to greenlight a sequel. Summit refused to comment, but last month we heard they were already moving ahead with another Bella/Edward installment.

Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg is working on a New Moon script. Summit owns the rights to the entire four novel series. The actors are committed to them all. There will be a sequel.

Meanwhile, Summit has been low-balling the opening figures, guesstimating a safe $20 million debut for the $37 million production. (The biggest opening weekend in the small studio’s history is just $25 million.) I expect it to be much larger, but we’ll have to wait and see what the “experts” think as the date approaches.