Box Office report: Vampire weekend

(Edward and Bella, sitting in a tree...)

I know, I know, I'm officially the 1,361st person to make that headline pun. This time it fits, since "Twilight" rolled up $70.4 million at 3,400 theaters from Friday through Sunday. The per-theater-average was $20,600, a nice healthy bite that was outbitten only by "Slumdog Millionaire," which expanded from 10 theaters to 32 on a wave of ecstatic reviews and pulled in an average $31,000 per theater. Keep in mind, too, that "Twilight" was double-booked in most of those theaters, so the total screen count comes to around 6,000: A serious push, and one that, in my opinion, should have resulted in even higher grosses.

But I'm sure little Summit Entertainment is very happy this Monday morning, since the movie only cost $37 million to make and it was in the black by early Saturday afternoon. As evidence of the urgent pent-up desire to see "Twilight" by a sharply defined audience: Half the weekend gross -- $35.7 million-- came on Friday, with a steep 41% drop-off the following day. But this is still the fastest-starting vampire movie ever -- it destroys "Interview with the Vampire"'s $36 million record back in 1994 -- and its revenue made up 44% of the weekend's total for all films.

By contrast, Disney's kiddie comedy "Bolt" came in third, with $27 million at 3,650 theaters (again, doubled up to about 6,200 screens), but studio executives have indicated that they knew they'd get creamed by "Twilight" and are expecting to make serious money over the long Thanksgiving weekend. For serious numbers parsers: "Bolt" played in the 3D format on 982 screens -- 16% of the total -- and grossed $10.3 million, or 38% of its weekend sum. So that's a yea vote for 3D.

More box office tea-leaf reading at Box Office Mojo and from Leonard Klady at Movie City News.