Prophecy: Twilight
By BOP Staff
October 31, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com
To the shock of Meyer herself as well as many within the publishing world, the unknown author was given a $750,000 advance for her first novel and two promised sequels. In hindsight, this has proven to be one of the shrewdest business deals in recent memory. Her book debut, Twilight, became an instant blockbuster and its three sequels all performed exceptionally well. At the end of the week of September 21st, four of the top six (!) best selling books in North America were Twilight and the novels that followed it: New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. Twilight and New Moon have each been mainstays on the best sellers list for two years now. Breaking Dawn, the finale in the saga of lead character Bella Swan, sold 1.3 million copies in its first 24 hours of release and had an initial print run of 3.7 million.
All of this is well established information to the fans of the series, but it may very well be the first anyone over 18 reading this has heard of the whole thing. Meyer's Twilight franchise has been compared to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series in terms of instant, widespread popularity, but it has only recently become an attention grabber to the media. They started noting that book signings held by the author saw her treated like a rock star by tweener fans, many of whom dress up in Twilight costume for the appearances.
Last spring, Summit Entertainment was re-purposed as a full-fledged movie studio and would-be distributor. One of their first new endeavors was to greenlight a movie adaptation of Twilight. This occurred in April of 2007, a time prior to when the Meyer phenomenon had reached a crescendo. The end result is that early footage of the movie makes it look rather low budget in scope, but Summit was undeterred. Believing that their audience was much larger in scope than people realized, the new distributor capitalized on the opportunity presented by Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince's move to the summer of 2009. Twilight was immediately slotted in the pre-Thanksgiving space Potter had previously owned on November 21, 2008. But how realistic are those expectations?
What are you expecting from the box office performance of Twilight?
Jason Dean: As a data point, there are more than a few over 18-year-olds that have heard of the Twilight series and are desperately looking forward to the opening.
Jason Lee: A big, big, big part of me sincerely doubts that this movie takes off at the box-office. I know that David has posted information proving me wrong, but I just don't see the audience for this films skewing wider than your typical fan who goes to see teen-slasher films. The casting of the film and the perceived quality (based on the trailer) will hold it back, I think.
I know that the books sales indicate otherwise, but I would be very surprised to see this film open above $20 million. I think mid-teens is about where it'll end up.
Les Winan: I see it doing $50+ million minimum. $75 million wouldn't shock me. My wife, sister, sister-in-law and grandmother are all counting the days.
Daron Aldridge: I fall very much into that over 18 demographic that had never heard of the title, series or author until it showed up on the cover of my Entertainment Weekly. This reminds me of the Eragon from a couple years ago, which was also based upon a novel that skewed young (regardless of the arguably derivative literary merits of Christopher Paolini), opened in the winter holiday season, and had questionable quality but as rabid fandom. That one underperformed domestically opening to $23.2 million. Adjusted for inflation, Eragon earned $25.1 million. So, I can see this one outperforming Tolkien-lite but not by much. I am going with about a guess of a $35 million opening.
Jim Van Nest: Until about three months ago, I'd never heard of Twilight. I met one 14 year-old girl (a friend's daughter, ya pervs) who is 100% addicted. Since that day, it's everywhere I go. The best comparisons I can come up with are the Potter series and possibly The Da Vinci Code...though both of these don't fit AS well as they're WAY bigger than Bella Swan. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone opened over $90 million in 2001, but there were already four books and they'd been in circulation for four years or so. Da Vinci opened to $77 million, but it had the controversy thing going for it, as well as Tom Hanks and it skewed toward people who can actually drive themselves to theaters.
Aside from all that is the trailer for Twilight, which definitely left me just "whelmed." They could have told me it was a commercial for the latest CW show and I'd have believed it. Based on the luke-warm trailer and the opening takes of some books that are MUCH larger than this one, I can't help but think that this opens in the $33 million range, with a ceiling of about $40 million. While this has a gazillion teenage girls excited, I just don't think that's a broad enough demographic to push this into the upper echelon of book adaptation openings.
Pete Kilmer: After talking with some of my female friends who are teachers and librarians I think this movie will hit at least $50 million for an opening weekend. All of their friends are super excited about it.
Eric Hughes: Even though Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga became a sensation in the book industry world - especially with the release of the series' fourth novel in the summer - I don't think the same phenomenon will be replicated up on the big screen. Its readership is too heavily female. As Les said, he's aware of a group of people that are anxious to see the adaptation, yet everyone he mentioned - his wife, sister, sister-in-law and grandmother - all fall into Meyer's targeted demo.
At times I feel like an undeniably RARE exception to this. I'm 22, male, and am up-to-date on everything Bella Swan. Even so, I have yet to run into anyone else my age, let alone my sex, that has enjoyed this series. So even though critics have oftentimes drawn comparisons between the literary successes of Twilight and that little famous boy we know as Harry Potter, comparisons between the two series should end exactly there: in the book industry.
This isn't to say that Twilight will perform poorly at the box office. In fact, it will perform quite lucratively for its distributor. I just don't think it has the power to compete with Potter, since that special series has fans in all places: men, women, young, old. Everyone.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, released in 2007, holds the series record for "weakest" opening weekend at $77.1 million. (The series' strongest opening being Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at $102.3 million). Based on these figures, I see Twilight for sure eclipsing $40 million, perhaps $50 million, but no more than that.
Max Braden: Count me as surprised but completely unmoved by pronouncements of a huge opening for Twilight. A decade ago Titanic earned a lot of its record gross from repeated viewings by teenage girls. But what have we seen in the last ten years? The Potter films succeeded because it appealed to more than just young girls; parents were enjoying the books as much as their kids, and the lead character was someone boys could relate to. Potter also had a big studio and big name director behind it. Twilight has an indie director, and a sub-$50 million budget, and a small distributor. And if romantic vampires were a huge draw, why did CBS cancel their series Moonlight? I predict Twilight opens to $22 million, tops.
Scott Lumley: I'm pretty much solidly agreeing with Max on this one. The trailers look less than spectacular, and innovation-wise, this is about as far as one could possibly get from Harry Potter and his spectacular world. Vampires have been done to death, and this will be front loaded and then die off quickly. $25 - $30 million opening weekend and maybe $100 million by the time it's all said and done.
David Mumpower: I think the beauty of the Twilight discussion is that even the people making the film didn't know what they had at the time. This was intended to be a Covenant type of release that could be franchised into a couple more titles when it went into production. Eighteen months later, this series has exploded into a true juggernaut. Had the rights been up for grabs now, they would have gone for a factor of ten more and the budget would have been much larger.
That's the reason the trailer looks rather low rent and grainy. It wasn't intended to be that type of film, but the sequels WILL be. Now they know. The question becomes how much of the core audience accepts that flaw going in and gives it chance. The question after that is how many people harshly judge it for the lousy production values and refuse to give the sequels a look. Both of those issues intrigue me, but I still think that the Occam's Razor here is that the books have sold like crazy. More importantly, the people buying them are the lifeblood of the movie industry. That should translate to a great opening weekend in the range of $40-$45 million. We'll have to see from there about whether it's Cloverfield-ian in terms of legs.
Kim Hollis: I remember back when Twilight was released into book stores brand new. I went out and picked it up because a friend who had read an advanced copy mentioned how great it was. Therefore, I had the book long before its popularity explosion. Even then, I knew it would make a fine film. All this time later, and I can totally understand why it clicks with teen girls, their mothers and their grandmothers. Edward Cullen is dreamy. Sure, this isn't going to be a movie for the male half of the demographic, but I do think we've seen with Sex and the City and Mamma Mia! that women and girls will support movies that interest them. I think Twilight falls into that category and will have an opening between $40 and $45 million.