Twilight Makes $7 Million from Midnight Shows

Published by Jeff Leins on November 21, 2008

Teen vampire phenomenon Twilight premiered last night and made an estimated $7 million from midnight screenings alone.

The total is well ahead of Sex and the City’s $2.5 million, a movie that appealed to a similar demographic. For comparison, the biggest midnight opening ever was earlier this year with The Dark Knight’s $18.5 million.

Variety reported Wednesday over 2,000 showings were sold out, 600 of them midnight screenings. That number definitely increased, but we probably won’t know until Sunday.

According to Fandango, the largest online ticket booth, Twilight accounted for around 94% of all its sales yesterday afternoon. As of early Friday morning, the movie was selling 5 tickets a second. It has cracked into #3 of all-time pre-sales for the site, just behind #1 Star Wars: Episode III and #2 The Dark Knight. This puts it above the much-compared Harry Potter series and the wildly popular Lord of the Rings adaptations. 83% of surveyed buyers said they would see the movie more than once.

Experts are predicting as much as a $60-65 million 3-day weekend for the movie going into the busy Thanksgiving holiday. Anything north of $63 mil would put it in the top 5 best openings of 2008.