This is a Grown Man Writing About New Moon

I know there are vampires. And a werewolf, I think. In the trailer the kid turns wolfman in broad daylight, which is suspicious. Other than that, I know what everyone else knows; New Moon made more money its opening weekend than any movie. Ever.

Movies like this, set in the realm of fantasy, horror and science fiction tend to do poorly. But when they catch on, their success is unavoidable. Themed fast food meals, graphic novel versions, SNL spoofs, clothes, jewelry; all of these things are created for the fans but not by the fans. They keep momentum going and milk every last cent out of a movie that’s already breaking records. But do they drive tickets sales? Do they motivate people to see this movie not once, but over and over again? Because while New Moon themed merchandise seems to be popping up every day, the real story might be happening elsewhere.

People are talking about New Moon. They’re talking about it on Twitter, Facebook, forums and fan pages. The blogosphere is certainly no exception. The below graph, provided by Blogpulse, illustrates what percentage of the 124,486,831 registered blogs discussed “movies” in the last month. It also shows what percentage of those blogs mentioned New Moon and The Blind Side, a movie that opened the same weekend (November 20^th)

Leading up to November 20th, the topic of New Moon rises steadily to the point of being mentioned almost as much as the general topic of movies. The Blind Side, which is hardly discussed at all leading up to November 20th, is mentioned close to 1/20^th as much as New Moon.

According to Box Office Mojo [1], New Moon’s opening weekend gross was $104,700,000 compared to The Blind Side’s $34,510,000. While The Blind Side’s earnings are high, they’re only about 1/4^th of New Moon’s.

There is no reason to suspect that there is a direct correlation between the volume of discussions leading up to an opening weekend and that weekend’s gross earnings. However, the possibility that online fan discussions are driving ticket sales can not be ignored. It is important to note that New Moon is part of a larger story, the Twilight franchise and The Blind Side is most likely a self contained film. A quick look at the list of highest grossing weekends for individual movies [2] reveals that all of the top 35 movies are either remakes or part of a franchise. New Moon is the second of four movies in the Twilight franchise, so it might make sense for Summit Entertainment, the studio responsible for the Twilight films, to focus a little less on merchandising and traditional marketing and little more on keeping the conversation going. The third film, Eclipse, is set to be released in about 7 months. It’s unlikely that Twilight’s diehard fans are going to stop talking about New Moon, but more causal ones might.

[2] http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/weekends/