New Moon DVD Gets a Release Date

Cancel that manicure and call off date night because you’ve got an appointment with Edward Cullen on March 20. At the stroke of 12:01 a.m., the “New Moon” two-disc special edition DVD and special edition Blu-Ray will hit store shelves. And you can bet your sweet Volvo they’re full of juicy extras.

Along with the fantastic film, fans can expect a six-part, behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the creation of the film, rehearsal footage from Muse, three music videos fromDeath Cab for Cutie, Anya Marina and Mute Math, as well as audio commentary by director Chris Weitz and editor Peter Lambert. But where, oh where, is the commentary track with Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner thatChris promised back in the day?

Perhaps that, along with the 20 minutes of deleted scenes, are among the “And more!” that the Summit press release touts. Count Hollywood Crush among the sorely disappointed if RPattz’s self-depricating humor isn’t included on the disc.

The DVD will retail for $32.99 and the Blu-Ray for $34.99. Both will go on pre-sale January 26.

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Did You Spot These Mistakes in ‘New Moon’

It’s been a bumper year for Hollywood, with box office takings totalling over $10 billion, but there is one big total they might not be so proud of – fans have spotted over 900 mistakes in this year’s releases, submitting them to website moviemistakes.com. A few of the mistakes:

New Moon mistakes: After Bella awakes from the first nightmare, we see her Romeo and Juliet book on the pillow beside her. When Charlie brings in her presents the book is gone, but then reappears on the pillow between shots.

In the very last scene, right before the ultimatum, if you look into the tail lights on Edward’s car you can see various members of the crew reflected. [read more]

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‘New Moon’ is the #4 Movie of 2009

UPDATE 11:00 AM THURSDAY 12/24:

Wednesday’s box office estimates are in, kicking off the five-day Christmas holiday weekend. The Twilight Saga: New Moon took in another $925K from 1593 locations. The film has now dropped from fifth to eighth place with the Wednesday release of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and Up in the Air, a large increase for A Christmas Carol, and a significant drop in theater count. New Moon’s domestic total is $277.5M after 34 days in release, placing it above The Hangover ($277,322,503) to become the #4 grossing film of 2009. The current worldwide total is $637.6M.

The top seven films are Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, Avatar, The Princess and the Frog, The Blind Side, Up in the Air, Did You Hear about the Morgans, and A Christmas Carol.

UPDATE 4:00 PM WEDNESDAY 12/23:

Tuesday’s box office numbers are in. The Twilight Saga: New Moon took in another $1,050,161 from 3035 locations, with a per theater average of $346. This represents an increase of 8.1% from Monday and the film remains in fifth place. New Moon’s domestic total is now $276,566,062 after 33 days in release. The current worldwide total is $636,666,062.

The top four films are Avatar,The Princess and the Frog, The Blind Side, and Did You Hear about The Morgans?. New Moon needs just $756,442 to pass The Hangover and become the #4 film of 2009.

UPDATE 3:00 PM TUESDAY 12/22:

Monday’s box office numbers are in. The Twilight Saga: New Moon took in another $917,582 from 3035 locations, with a per theater average of $302. This represents a drop of 33.4% from Sunday and the film remains in fifth place. This increases New Moon’s domestic total to $275,515,901 after 32 days in release. The current worldwide total is $635,615,901.

The next milestone comes when the film takes in another $1.81M. That will put New Moon’s domestic cumulative total above The Hangover into fourth place for 2009. An average of $181,000 per day from now until the end of the year will make that happen, which certainly seems plausible. If it earns $17.5M from today through December 31 it will surpass Up to finish in third place. That would require an average box office take of $1.75M per day.

UPDATE 5:00 PM MONDAY 12/21:

The final domestic box office numbers for its fifth weekend show that The Twilight Saga: New Moon finished in fifth place, taking in $4,407,598 from 3035 locations with a per theater average of $1,452. These figures include newly released official numbers of $1,387,458 for Friday, $1,641,835 for Saturday, and a 16.1% drop to $1,378,305 Sunday.

This increases the film’s domestic cumulative total to $274,598,319 through its first 31 days of release and represents a 44.6% drop from last weekend. This is the official tally which, including the actual number for Sunday, has been revised upward by $40K from the previously announced $4.37M (a negligible amount). This gives New Moon a worldwide cumulative total of $634,698,319.

Topping the charts was new entry Avatar with a slightly lower-than-estimated $77,025,481 from 3452 locations for a per theater average of $22,313. Overseas, the film earned $164,545,565 in its opening days from 14,461 screens in 106 territories. Its worldwide cumulative total of $241,571,046 is still the biggest “nonfranchise, nonsequel opening ever.” The Princess and the Frog dropped 49.7% from first to second place in its fourth weekend with $12,185,949 from 3475 locations for a per theater average of $3,507. In third place was The Blind Side, dropping 33.4% from second place with $10,021,280 from 3407 locations for a per theater average of $2,941. In fourth place was another new entry, Did You Hear About the Morgans? with $6,616,571 from 2718 locations for an average of $2,434.

Also surprising was the 51.2% plummet of Invictus , moving it from third to sixth place below New Moon. The film had been ahead of New Moon since its release. Likewise, A Christmas Carol, which had moved past New Moon during the week, dropped 49.6% into seventh place. The Twilight Saga: New Moon should be in sixth or seventh place. But it actually moved up higher than expected due to its smaller drop of 44.6%.

New Moon is currently the #5 domestic moneymaker of 2009. $2.73M will move New Moon past The Hangover into fourth place. $18.41M will move New Moon past Up into third place for the year. $27.37M will surpass Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to become the #2 film of 2009. There are 11 days left in the year (including today), with one more weekend. At $3-4M per Friday-Sunday, adding in $2-300K each weekday, it can easily finish fourth for the year. Keep in mind that the other five films in the top six all opened in the May-July blockbuster period.

Here is the reason why this overall number is different than the one reported by the industry on Sunday. After the Saturday box office totals came in on Sunday morning, the studio estimated what Sunday would be and came up with a weekend projection. That is standard industry procedure. Of course, Sunday and weekend figures can only be estimated at that point. The actual Sunday numbers weren’t known until now. The actual numbers that come in after the weekend are usually not too far off from the estimates made on Sunday. They usually adjust slightly up or down but are rarely far off. In this case, the number was only $40K below the estimate.

NOTE: Opening weekend box office totals for The Twilight Saga: New Moon are posted HERE. The first week and second weekend totals are HERE. The second week and third weekend totals are posted HERE. The third week and fourth weekend totals are posted HERE. The fourth week and fifth weekend totals are posted HERE.

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Chris Weitz on the ‘The Pattinson Effect’

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New Moon Trailer Most Watched Video of 2009

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New Moon Trailer is Top 4 Most Watched YouTube Video

What You Watched and Searched for on YouTube in 2009

This year has been the biggest yet for online video, and for the first time we’re sharing our official Most Watched lists and some of the fastest-rising search terms on YouTube. Some moments were big (President Obama’s inauguration), some small (a Minnesota wedding party erupts into dance), some expected (“New Moon”), some surprising (Susan Boyle) — but all of them inspired, entertained and connected millions of people around the world via YouTube.

For these lists, we looked at view counts of YouTube’s most popular videos this year (in some instances we aggregated views across multiple versions of the same video):

Most Watched YouTube videos (Global):

4. New Moon Movie Trailer (31+ million views)

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More ‘New Moon’ Box Office Numbers

North American cumulative is now up to $267.4 million

In its fourth week in theaters, “New Moon” was in fourth place at the box office.

North America: 3 day estimate = $8.0 million playing at 3,635 theaters for a per theater average of $2,201.

• Friday = $2.4 million

Saturday = $3.4 million

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Chris Weitz Says ‘New Moon’ Bootlegging Arrest Is ‘Terribly Unfair’

There are those fans who were really excited about “New Moon,” buying Robert Pattinson-emblazoned pillows and making elaborate scrapbooks for the stars, and then there are those fans who may have gone overboard in their excitement. Samantha Tumpach was busted in a Chicago movie theater for allegedly taping three minutes of the “Twilight” saga sequel inside a theater in late November and could face up to a three-year prison term for her actions; Tumpach has said she was essentially filming a home movie had no intention of distributing the footage.

Now Chris Weitz, the director of “New Moon,” has come to Tumpach’s defense, saying that the prospect of such a harsh sentence is unjust.

“Needless to say, the case seems to me terribly unfair and I would like to do what I can to address this,” Weitz wrote in an e-mail to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Weitz also said that he’s been in contact with Summit Entertainment, the studio behind the franchise, about his concerns but admitted there’s little he can do since “the film is, after all, not my property.”

Tumpach, 22, spent two days in jail following her arrest on a felony charge intended to dissuade bootleggers from recording films in a theaters and selling illegal copies. Last week, Tumpach told the Sun-Times she was recording her sister’s surprise 29th birthday party celebrated with family members and shot three minutes of footage inside the theater. She said the recorded footage contained ads, previews and snippets of the film and that she had no intention of distributing the footage.

‘There is, needless to say, a difference between trying to protect the copyright of a film and making an unfair example of someone who clearly seems not to have any intentions towards video piracy,” Weitz said.

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What ‘New Moon’ Means for Hollywood

The Twilight Saga: New Moon opened with $142M its first weekend, earned over $230M in less than two weeks ($473M, if you count the global box office), and broke records previously held by male-oriented tent pole releases like The Dark Knight (in Single Day Sales). So now that other studios have taken note of the vampire saga as a legit and bankable franchise and not a one-off fluke, how could New Moon change Hollywood?

That’s a question pundits have been asking since New Moon‘s numbers started rolling in two weekends ago, indicating that the sequel had bigger potential than anticipated. By opening day, it had already topped the entire opening weekend take of the first film ($72M over $69.6M a year ago). By yesterday, the LA Times had deemed success a “problem” for Summit Entertainment, a studio whose stock has risen as fast as the quickening pulses of a theater full of tweeners and TwilightMoms watching Taylor Lautner take off his shirt.

So how could the increasing successes of Twilight and New Moon affect how movies are made and sold? We consider what New Moon‘s popularity could mean for Hollywood.

Female audiences demand to be catered to.

Twilight was always a female-oriented property, thanks to a high quotient of moony eyes, forbidden love, and romantic longing courtesy of author Stephenie Meyer. And studio execs perked up when the fantasy book-turned-indie film raked in over $69M its opening weekend, making back its budget by double. But as evidenced by worldwide masses of screaming fans, a sprawling fansite community, and its blockbuster box office performance, New Moon is no accidental success – women will buy tickets, they will go multiple times to the movies, and they will bring their friends/daughters/mothers. And they’ll even go to horror-themed movies – that is, if the movie gives them what they want. (See below.)

Summit is now a studio model.

From the start, Summit Entertainment did the best job it could have done to spin itself a mega franchise out of an otherwise unnoticeable vampire love story. Now, it’s a major player with a diverse upcoming slate that includes another Robert Pattinson vehicle and a smattering of rom-coms and family flicks. While Summit may not make a smash hit out of every film (their 2008 horror pic Sorority Row was a modest financial success, but barely) they will use the enormous profits from New Moon to build the studio and finance its expansion, moving from a tiny studio that specialized in obscure genre pics (remember P2?) to a mainstream distributor with the power to slot a vampire movie next to a sci-fi actioner (Knowing) and a potential Oscar picture (The Hurt Locker).

And how’d they do it? The New Moon campaign benefited as much from the public’s obsession with its “are they or aren’t they?” on-screen couple (AKA Robsten) as it did from the deliberate releases of new clips and photos from the film, which became events in themselves. Summit also took note of and worked with the fansite community, rewarding their footwork with all-important access and ensuring that their built-in audience stayed interested.

Moms are getting in on the action.

The majority of women ticket buyers older than 25, and that means older women are devouring a movie about werewolves and vampires. (Of course they’re going for the romance, but still.) You see, we ladies want movies about more than female drama and shopping – I’m looking at you, Sex and the City – and we’re interested in fantasy and science fiction and yes, even horror. A healthy helping of romance never hurts, either. If we like what we see in a genre film, we’ll get behind a franchise, a fact not lost on the team behind James Cameron’s Avatar, a science-fiction epic that 20th Century Fox hopes will capture the elusive, important female demographic.

Huffington Post writer Danny Groner has another explanation: thanks to New Moon, mothers and older women are learning to explore beyond their age group, indulging in teen-oriented fare likeTwilight to re-capture their youth. Hence, the rise of the self-proclaimed “cougar,” Twilight Moms, and the reason you’ll see so many middle-aged women at any given screening of New Moon.

Fangirls are a force to be reckoned with.

Fandom has long been the territory of males, so it’s refreshing to see a self-contained community ofTwilight fangirls growing steadily. They devour Twilight trivia, publish meticulous blogs on every aspect of the franchise and its stars’ lives, and have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. And some of them, too, still live with their parents. (The difference being fangirls also have real jobs and take showers. Zing!) Twilight fangirls are just as powerful and just as nerdy as fanboys – and maybe now studios and the fanboy community can finally take them seriously.

The sprawling network of fansites demonstrates a viral potential in fervent female audiences that any studio will want to harness in the future; but first, they’ll have to learn how to work with them. Fandom is a force of nature so strong that it can hurt a franchise just as easily as help it if the fans are not kept happy. So it will be important for studios to first respect the power of the fangirl community, and then cater to it – because as New Moon demonstrates, one can stoke an already-huge fire, if one puts enough pretty boys and make-out scenes in a film.

Beefcake is critic proof.

New Moon gave us what even Twilight did not: scene after scene of shirtless beefcake. There was a time when women ogled the male body en masse; after all, isn’t that what Playgirl is for? In recent years that objectification has waned, partly thanks to the rise of the sensitive emo boy, a type of wan romantic male more appealing for his tortured feelings than his biceps. But New Moon gives it to us both ways: boys who have feelings AND hairless, exposed chests!

I’m not saying it would be a benefit to cinema, but should Hollywood take note and inject their films with more hunky man meat, they might see more female butts in seats. And not the old guy kind; old guys (read: 35 and up) are not hot to younger women. But 20-something beefcake is universal!

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New Moon Makes Half a Billion Dollars

Worldwide Estimated Gross to Date: $570.1 million!

Breakdown

International cumulative is now up to $314.5 million!

North American cumulative is now up to $ $255.6 million!

In its third week in theaters, “New Moon” came in second place in box office receipts.

Domestically, “New Moon” earned $5.2 million on Friday (12/4) and $6.5 million on Saturday (12/5).

The international estimated weekend gross is $40.7 million.

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