#BreakingDawn Now Third Biggest Box-Office Hit of 2011!

Starring Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner, Bill Condon's The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 is currently the third-biggest grosser at the North American box office, having surpassed Todd Phillips' The Hangover: Part II this past weekend. According to figures found at Box Office Mojo, The Hangover 2, starring Bradley Cooper, Justin Bartha, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms, has taken in $254.46 million in the domestic market. After 26 days (as of Dec. 13), Breaking Dawn 1 has collected $260.8 million. No wonder George Takei is afraid of the Twilight menace.
For comparison's sake: David Slade's The Twilight Saga: Eclipse ended its run at no. 4 for the year 2010, trailing Lee Unkrich's Toy Story 3, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and Jon Favreau/Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man 2. Curiously, Eclipse finished its run slightly ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1: $300m vs. $295m. Chris Weisz's The Twilight Saga: New Moon also ended its run at no. 4 among 2009 releases, after James Cameron/Sam Worthington's Avatar, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.


As for Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight, it was the seventh biggest 2008 release in the US/Canada, following Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale's The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Steven Spielberg/Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Will Smith vehicle Hancock, Andrew Stanton's Wall-E, and Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger's Kung Fu Panda.


As predicted, Breaking Dawn fell below the $1m-per-day mark on Day 25, Monday, Dec. 12. More comparisons: New Moon fell below the $1m-per-day mark (inflation adjusted) on Day 20. As mentioned before, comparisons to Eclipse would be unfair, for the third Twilight movie came out in the summer, when teenagers/young adults are out of school or college. Eclipse's first dipped below the $1m-per-day mark on Day 34. Twilight fell below that mark on Day 18 (Adjusting for inflation here gets tricky, as average 2011 movie-ticket prices factor in 3D surcharges for a number of releases — whereas Breaking Dawn was not released in 3D. My point: although in overall average 2011 prices Twilight would remain above the $1m-per-day mark until Day 25, in actuality it did indeed fall below that mark on Day 18 if we were to use — lower — 2011 average 2D prices.)

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