Weekend Recap: Total Eclipse of the box office

The word might be that “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is better than the previous movies, but there was virtually no change at the box office. Summit Entertainment will gladly have it and so will the box office.

While second film “New Moon” amassed a $142.8 million three-day opening in November 2009, smoking the $69 million estimated for “Eclipse,” over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, this was obviously due “Eclipse’s” Wednesday release. When you add up the “Eclipse” estimates over the five days from Wednesday to Sunday, they total $161.7 million. In the first five days after “New Moon” was released, from Friday to Tuesday the total was a nearly identical $164.6 million.

The Top 10 (estimates):

1. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse – $69 M (weekend) … $69 M (gross)
2. The Last Airbender – $40.5 M … $40.5 M
3. Toy Story 3 – $30.1 M … $289 M
4. Grown Ups – $19.1 M … $77.6 M
5. Knight and Day – $10.4 M … $45.7 M
6. The Karate Kid – $8.1 M … $151.6 M
7. The A-Team – $3.1 M … $69.2 M
8. Get Him to the Greek – $1.2 M … $57.4 M
9. Shrek Forever After – $847 T … $232.2 M
10. Cyrus – $774 T … $1.4 M

In theory, considering “Eclipse” came out over a better stretch of days as far as receipts usually go, it should have outdone its predecessor. Instead, here’s the proof that the Twilight craze has founds its fan base and it won’t covert too many others.

“The Last Airbender,” which came in at number two, defying my expectations, posted a respectable $40 million, which is actually a tremendous feat when you consider it was one of the worst reviewed films of 2010 so far. That number tells you everything you need to know about the minimum that a gigantic built-in fan base will earn you at the box office even if your movie is something awful.

Holdovers didn’t fair all that well this weekend, with two films finishing in the top ten without even making $1 million, but the box office still went up 17.6 percent from last weekend and 18.7 percent compared to Independence Day weekend last year.