Will New Moon End on Top?

Box office numbers, records and grosses just make my head spin. We can land one record, but fall short of another, and Summit releases projections that may or not be accurate (although they usually are) before the weekend even ends. We speculate, wish, pray, and hold our breath as we wait to see exactly where New Moon will land on the "all time grossing" list, as well as the "highest grossing movie of all time". The goal will always be to be the biggest movie of all time, but I"ll settle for biggest of the year, especially given that this is a non summer movie

Summer release movies are "the biggest" typically of any year. Have a movie where you want to rank in millions? Market it towards men and release it between June and July, and watch the money train roll in. Want to release a feel good movie? Release it during Christmas and you'll get a pretty decent take in the end. Want to release an independent fantasy genre love film targeted at females in the middle of November, that breaks all rules about vampire and werewolf mythology, including sparkles? Did I mention that it's a SEQUEL, typically a genre that bombs in opening weekends? Watch it become a blockbuster and find itself in 6th place for the year.
However, there are literally hundreds of movie lists out there that also adjust for inflation, show highest gross for U.S. only, worldwide, added DVD sales, and so on and so on. While Titanic has the highest gross, technically Gone With The Wind, adjusted for inflation, has the highest gross ever. They also have to calculate the type of tickets sold-- Dark Knight sold on many IMAX 3d screens, at roughly $20-25 a ticket. New Moon sells at roughly $8-10 a ticket.

1	Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen	P/DW	$402,111,870	4,293	$108,966,307	4,234	6/24	10/15
2	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	WB	$301,873,998	4,455	$77,835,727	4,325	7/15	-
3	Up	BV	$293,004,164	3,886	$68,108,790	3,766	5/29	11/5
4	The Hangover	WB	$277,170,253	3,545	$44,979,319	3,269	6/5	-
5	Star Trek	Par.	$257,730,019	4,053	$75,204,289	3,849	5/8	10/1
6	The Twilight Saga: New Moon	Sum.	$230,674,000	4,042	$142,839,137	4,024	11/20	-

6th place. In 2 weeks, we are one of the highest grossing of all year. We need a mere 27 million to take 5th place. We made 20 million last Wednesday alone, not a standard high grossing day for movies.

Highest midnight gross- check
Highest 24 hour period gross- check
5th highest gross of the year- check
Biggest movie ever? Let's wait and see.

We have a very long way to go. At this point, we aren't even in the top 50 (we'd have to break over $600 million worldwide to even make it on the list for biggest gross ever). There are at least 5 Harry Potter films on that list, and of course Titanic is still #1, at $1,842,879,955. Yeah, almost 2 billion world wide. Seems like I need to go to the theater tonight