The Twi-Hards were out in force as The Twilight Saga: New Moon opened at 12:01 am Friday at 3,514 theaters.  New Moon grossed an amazing $26.27 million from those midnight showings, shattering the previous record set by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which brought in $22.2 million at midnight shows last June.  The Dark Knight, whose full opening day record of $67.2 million could be in danger, earned $18.2 million from witching hour shows at some 3,040 theaters. 

While some analysts see the record-setting midnight attendance as the result of an unprecedented publicity campaign that will attract the majority of the potential audience to theaters on the first day, no one is quite sure how big the Twilight audience is.  The first Twilight film did 52% of its opening weekend business on Friday.  Given the enormous turnout for the midnight showings, an opening weekend of over $100 million appears likely unless New Moon is even more “front-loaded” than the first Twilight film.

One thing is for sure, New Moon, which will be shown on approximately 8,000 screens at 4,024 theaters, is certain to be #1 film for this weekend.  Film of the crowds at the midnight screenings indicate that the Twi-Hards are an almost exclusively female group, and mostly under 25.  The success of the original Twilight, which attracted an audience that was a whopping 75% female and grossed nearly $400 million worldwide, proved that a movie doesn’t have to appeal to all four audience quadrants to become a huge success.  New Moon may provide a good measure of just how big a film with a limited demographic appeal can be.  The answer might just surprise Tinseltown analysts once again.