‘New Moon’ Sells Most Advanced Tickets Ever

Published by Jeff Leins on: November 16th, 2009

Five days before its release in over 4,000 theaters, The Twilight Saga: New Moon has sold the most advanced tickets in Fandango.com history.  The 10-year-old website is the largest destination for online movie tickets.

The Twilight sequel topped the list as of Saturday night, according to Nikki Finke, beating reigning champ, 2005’s Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith; this year’s second highest-grossing movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; last year’s box office juggernaut, The Dark Knight; and the original Twilight.

Up until this series, most people only knew Robert Pattinson as Cedric from Harry Potter. Now he’s drawing bigger early crowds than even that huge franchise, plus Batman and Star Wars? Though, to be fair, the Stephenie Meyer adaptation also stars a perpetually shirtless Taylor Lautner and, oh yeah, Kristen Stewart.

The vampire franchise became a hit a year ago this weekend, posting $7 million in midnight sales alone, set records with a $70.6 million opening weekend, and ultimately grossed $383 million worldwide ($191.5 million domestic).

Summit Entertainment’s follow-up is expected to surpass those numbers, though even box office experts aren’t sure how high the sequel will go. Predictions for this weekend are between $80 million and $100 million, which would make it the second-largest opening of 2009 behind Transformers 2. It may not have the wide audience or summer opening of Michael Bay’s giant robots, but expect multiple repeat viewings to drive record-breaking numbers.

New Moon tickets went on sale via Fandango starting in August 31, prompting immediate sell-outs of midnight screenings across the country. Thousands more have sold out since. The movie now accounts for 86% of Fandango’s ticket sales and last week MovieTickets.com reported New Moon is selling four times the tickets of the original Twilight.