The Twilight Saga: Eclipse continued a strong box office trend in the series, though it failed to live up to the success of its predecessor. Eclipse, the third effort in the tween-age vampire love story, brought in a holiday haul of $161 million over five days, with $69 million over the weekend. Also new to theaters, The Last Airbender rustled up nearly $57 million over four days with $30 million in weekend sales. Twilight put a stake in Toy Story, which came in third place with $42.2 million. The Pixar picture has posted $226 million in sales so far.
The Twilight series is a strong one, with each film outdoing the others, though not always in the ways that count monetarily. The Twilight Saga: New Moon sucked up more than $140 million its first weekend, a smashing record and far higher than "Eclipse." However, the third entry gained steam with men; 35 percent of ticket sales were captured from the gender in comparison to 20 percent from the last movie.
Independence Day weekends tend to be slow in comparison to other holidays such as Christmas or Thanksgiving, but "Eclipse" faired well with a third place record. Similar to other films debuting midweek, attendance started out frontloaded then backed off sharply Sunday when people preferred sunshine, BBQ, fireworks and family to a cold, dark cinema and $6 tubs of popcorn. Still, this weekend was an 18 percent upswing over last year, and a small revival for revenues in an otherwise dull summer.
The Top Ten
The Last Airbender may have failed with critics, but it won over audiences. The adventure was a great alternative for families, given the waning steam of both Toy Story 3 and The Karate Kid with boys and their parents. Grown Ups held strong in fourth place, managing an overall $77 million by the end of its second weekend while Knight and Day rounded out the top five with a lackluster $45.7 million thus far.
