New Moon Shatters Box Office Records

Critics of the Twilight Saga film series never thought the franchise's newest film, New Moon, could ever beat Batman at the box office. Well, it's finally happened, as the second entry in the extremely hot franchise, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, not only broke the all-time box office record for midnight screenings, but also toppled the record number of first day box office receipts once held by The Dark Knight.

Twilight fans are certainly devoted. At midnight screenings in 3,514 theaters, the film earned a hefty $26.3 million. The previous record was held by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which nabbed a measly $22.2 million when it opened at midnight last July. The big news comes with New Moon's first day grosses of $72.7 million playing at 4,024 theaters. That crushes The Dark Knight's first day take of $67.2 million by more than $4 million dollars. It's going to be a hard record to beat now!

Exactly one year ago, it took Twilight its entire first weekend to earn little more than $69 million, a take which New Moon surpassed in less than twenty-four hours. Could the film be poised to take down The Dark Knight's three-day box office record? We'll have to wait until Monday to find out for sure, but the film shows no signs of slowing down.