Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight hit the number one spot in the US for its opening weekend and scored the biggest opening ever for a film with a female director. The film, which is adapted from the first book in Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling young adult fantasy series, picked up $70.6 million over the weekend, $7 million of which came from Thursday evening midnight screenings.
Made for just $37 million, the film – which tells of the love story between a teenage girl and a vampire and which stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as the star crossed lovers – has exceeded expectations for the studio Summit Entertainment, who had envisaged a $50-$60 million weekend. So good were the figures that the studio has already announced it will push on with production of New Moon, the second novel in the series, for which Stewart and Pattinson will return.
