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The Twilight Saga: New Moon

$72.7 million. The biggest single day of box office in history. More than Twilight earned over its entire opening weekend. The Dark Knight's single day record is gone. Harry Potter's midnight sneak record is also gone. The opening weekend record is still technically in play at this point, but we'll get to that in a bit.

As always when dealing with openings of this magnitude, for purposes of calculating the remainder of the weekend, the midnight figure of $26.3 million is removed from the equation and added back in at the end. That leaves us with a rather quaint $46.4 million for New Moon to play with here.

For a weekend multiplier comparison, we'll be looking at Twilight. That had a $35 million Friday with $7 million attributed to midnight showings. With its $69.6 million weekend, that became a weekend multiplier of 2.23 with the midnight figure put back in at the end. Counting the entire Friday compared to the entire weekend, we have a rather hilarious 1.93 multiplier. Forget any thoughts of The Dark Knight's opening weekend record falling with these multipliers.

Despite the enormous gain in audience the franchise has seen in just one film, the weekend multiplier of 2.23 that Twilight had fits perfectly here for New Moon. Just based off of the $46.4 million figure, that's a weekend estimate of $103.4 million. Add the midnight figure of $26.3 million back into total and that's a three-day tally of $129.7 million.

The Blind Side

Other movies were actually released this weekend, including The Blind Side, which opened with a surprisingly strong $10.6 million on Friday. Clearly the option of choice for dates where the female had not been brainwashed by the Twilight cult, the football film will be an anti-Twilight in the multiplier department and should turn in a weekend of $30.7 million

Planet 51

The computer-animated film earned a somewhat disappointing $3.1 million on Friday. Things will get better on the weekend, but a lack of marketing and this being the 97th animated film this year don't help very much. Give it $10.8 million for the weekend.

Projected Estimates for the Top Ten (Three-Day)
Projected Rank	Film	Estimated Gross
1	The Twilight Saga: New Moon	129.7
2	The Blind Side	30.7
3	2012	24.8
4	A Christmas Carol	12.0
5	Planet 51	10.8
6	Precious	10.7
7	The Men Who Stare At Goats	2.4
8	Couples Retreat	1.7
9	The Fourth Kind	1.5
10	Paranormal Activity	1.3