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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.

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