For perspective, Twilight's early Friday grosses tripled Quantum of Solace at the same point, but bear in mind that these movies cater to different audiences, and different audiences mean different gross patterns. Twilight's primary demographics are young and female, and the last event movie for women, the older-skewing Sex and the City, earned around $2.5 million in its early midnight shows, and tallied $57 million by the end of its first weekend. Twilight is distributed by Summit Entertainment, which previously had success with young females as a producer of the Step Up movies.
Produced for $37 million, Twilight is based on the first of a popular series of four novels by Stephenie Meyer. While they haven't reached the Harry Potter level of cultural saturation, they have been a legitimate sales success. The media attention hasn't been all hype. The fourth book, Breaking Dawn, sold 1.3 million copies in its first day alone last August, and that week, Twilight the novel, had its highest week yet, selling 120,000 copies. Reportedly, the series has sold over eight million copies domestically and another nine million overseas. Further portending success, Twilight's soundtrack debuted at No. 1 in sales, the first time that's happened since 8 Mile in 2002, and has moved a substantial 272,000 units in its first two weeks, prior to the movie's opening.
