The Twilight Saga: New Moon set a new opening day record on its way to posting the third largest debut weekend of all time.  New Moon’s estimated weekend total of $140.7 million trails only The Dark Knight ($158.4 million) and Spider-Man 3 ($151.1 million). The teen vampire film set new records for midnight shows (see “Twi-Hards Demolish Midnight Records”) and for opening day totals.  New Moon earned $72.7 million on Friday eclipsing The Dark Knight’s previous record of $67.2 million.  New Moon also set new records for the largest November opening ever and the biggest non-summer debut.  With help from Sandra Bullock’s The Blindside, which surpassed expectations with an estimated $34.5 million opening, New Moon pushed the box office to its second biggest weekend total ever, some $254 million, a gargantuan 56% larger than last year, and just a shade behind The Dark Knight’s July weekend total of $257.6 million.

New Moon performed roughly twice as well as the first Twilight film, which earned $69.7 million in its opening weekend last year.  It’s an amazing feat for a sequel to double the performance of the original film, and it should be interesting to see if New Moon will end up with anything close to twice Twilight’s domestic cumulative of $192 million.  Even if New Moon doesn’t end up doubling Twilight’s total, its gargantuan debut means that Duff MacDonald of The Daily Beast will have to up his estimated “Gross Vampire Product” total of $771 million for 2009.

Opening weekend crowds for New Moon were even more female (80% versus 75% for Twilight) and younger (50% under 21 versus 50% under 25) than those for the first film.  Audiences gave the film a solid “A-“ CinemaScore grade, which indicates that New Moon could demonstrate some decent “legs” in the coming weeks.  Summit Entertainment, which produced both Twilight films, knows how to strike while the iron is hot.  The third film in the series, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse has already been shot and will open next June.

Second place went to The Blindside, which provided star Sandra Bullock with her biggest opening ever.  The Blindside also set a new record for a sports movie opening, though football is not the only focus of this true story of a homeless black teen adopted by a rich white family.  The audience for The Blindside was 59% female, but skewed much older than New Moon’s, with 75% over 25.  Females dominated the audiences of the top two films that accounted for $175 million of the $254 weekend box office total.  Who said that a film has to appeal to all four audience quadrants to be a big hit?

The other new film in wide release that opened this week, Sony’s Planet 51, a CGI animated feature, disappointed with an estimated $12.6 million and a less-than mediocre $4,152 per theater average.  The cartoony space adventure is basically a one-trick pony, the “alien” invaders are human, but even though it clearly won’t be a Monster vs. Aliens-size hit, it may have a chance to do some business over the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend, though it will face direct competition from Disney’s animated The Princess and the Frog and Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is going wide next weekend.

Last week’s winner, the disaster film 2012, dropped 60%, but still managed to earn an estimated $26.5 million and finish in third place.  2012 has earned nearly $160 million domestically, but it has done even better overseas where it has taken in $341 million.  Robert Zemeckis’ motion-capture A Christmas Carol fell 45% in its third weekend, but brought in $12.2 million and brought its cumulative to nearly $80 million.  Precious added 455 theaters and increased its revenue by 87.4%, but in spite of its increase in revenue, it fell from third place to sixth in this much more competitive weekend. 

Astro Boy appears to be at the end of its run and it will likely end up just under $20 million, while Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant looks to finish with just under $14 million.