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WTF? OMG.

Kim Hollis: Twilight opened to $69.6 million this weekend. Please explain.

Brandon Scott: A conversation I had a few days ago revealed that my sometimes-girlfriend is starting a book club. The first book they will read is Twilight. These are attorneys, professionals, women in their 20s and 30s. The point? These books have extended beyond the kiddie and teen world. The box office result is a reflection of that. I had seen the trailer about six weeks ago and said to my neighbor, "what the hell is that?" It looks terrible. I thought it was a B-movie with a sub $10 million budget. I have since been educated.

Tim Briody: I got nothing. Seriously, this apparently was the most anticipated book to movie adaptation since Harry Potter, and the difference is that we were pretty much oblivious to it. It's amazing.

Eric Hughes: When the last book in the Twilight saga sold 1.3 million copies in its first 24 hours just a few months ago, I knew something special was going to happen here. Even so, I still didn't predict $70 million. Looking back at my comments in the Prophecy column, I believe I went with an opening weekend take of anywhere in the $40-50 million range.

But one quick thing I do want to say is that after taking a gander at the audience at my Saturday afternoon matinee, I'm not absolutely shocked by Twilight's boffo numbers. I fully expected to be the only 20-something male in attendance, and I was fine with that. Instead there were people of all kinds. For the most part females (of any age), but also a smattering of boys, men (including dads fulfilling their fatherly obligation of taking the kids) and even couples in their 50s and 60s without children. I was amazed by how diverse the crowd was, considering that all you ever heard about the movie was that it targeted tween girls (which I, too, am guilty of declaring).

Scott Lumley: I don't quite get how this flew so low on our radar, either. I agree with the earlier assessment that the trailers looked low budget and didn't impress and I based my estimates on that. It might just be that we aren't in the demographic for Twilight and as such weren't positioned to be excited about it, or even speak to people that would be excited about it.

Max Braden: A friend told me her 20-something roommate really wanted to see it even though she'd never read the books. How am I supposed to explain that? The trailers looked horrible. Pattison looked like he was rejected from a boy band for having no charm. I think I read about this kind of female hysteria in a medieval history textbook.





Marty Doskins: In a previous MMQB, I had mentioned that I was off the bandwagon of young adult book adaptations until a movie proved me wrong. At first I thought this was finally the one, but I'm not so sure after looking more at this series. I had never actually seen the books until this past week. I was substitute teaching at a middle school and some of the kids brought the book along with them. Most of the previous failed book adaptations had come from books in the 150 to 200 page range. However, this book is over 500 pages long.

While I know that quantity doesn't translate to quality, maybe there is something about the amount of source material to work with. I'm almost looking at this as closer to Harry Potter than any of the previous young adult adaptations. Is there a connection between this being a much more lengthy selection versus some of the other films like Because of Winn-Dixie (190 pages), The Water Horse (128 pages), and How to Eat Fried Worms (128 pages). Even A Series of Unfortunate Events had to get material from the first three books in the series to make a single film. This movie did fairly well, but again it had a lot more pages of writing to work with.

Reagen Sulewski: There's nothing quite like lightning in a bottle. The producers managed to get this film out at pretty much exactly the right second to capitalize on the peak of this fad (that's right, I said the f-word). As for the appeal of the material itself, I'm going with mass hypnosis.

Jamie Ruccio: Tween girls have been the engine of pop culture for 50 years now. From Frank Sinatra and Elvis to The Beatles and Titantic, girls from ten to 13 have driven some of the largest pop cultural events in our times. I think the influence of the pre-teen and teen girl set is being understated here and shouldn't be. $69 million is a stellar number that only a highly energized demo (or multiple interested demos) can bring.

They were the ones who propelled it to the opening weekend and may drive it well into the holidays but I suspect their older sisters, mothers and grandmothers went, too. I know one woman who professed the desire to see it again. With these groups also come the captive males (or males who use them as an excuse to go). But again, I don't think the impact of the younger crowd can be downplayed. Without them, I doubt this movie does half of what it did this past weekend.

Jason Lee: I don't think any of us need to feel bad about this film flying under our radar - it flew under EVERYONE'S radar for the past year and only in recent weeks did this industry start to realize how big this film was going to be. For me, I'm simply shocked at how far beyond the teen girl demographic this film got. Women can only get you so far. Clearly this was a two or three quadrant film, something I did not expect at all.

Kim Hollis: I was always feeling like there was a massive built-in audience for this; however, my "massive" number would have equalled around $45 to $50 million. I was off by a ton. This was Sex in the City for a younger generation, and if you think about how loyal they are to their American Idols and so forth, I don't guess it should be a big surprise that they came out in support for a book-based movie that has so thoroughly captured their attention. Will it wind up being a flavor-of-the-week? That's yet to be determined.

David Mumpower: I made a similar projection to Kim when this came up six weeks ago. At the time, I felt that we may be overstating Twilight's upside. That was...incorrect. The explanation for this is relatively simple in my estimation. All of the people who have made the books bestsellers showed up on opening weekend. In addition, the curiosity factor lured in some folks who probably had no idea what Twilight is (and presumably left the theater equally befuddled). $69.6 million is epic. It approaches Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone's $90 million start. Anyone who claims they saw that coming six months ago is lying. And I include the film's producers in that.

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