These numbers reflect what’s going on in the rest of the country, too. New Moon is projected to make $85 to $100 million during opening weekend.
The Web site Fandango.com reported Friday evening that its online tickets sales for New Moon were at more than 10 tickets per second.
Harry Potter made $77.8 million during its opening weekend.
New Moon, which features a love triangle between a human, a vampire and a werewolf, is based on the book of the same name by Stephanie Meyer. It’s the second in a four-book series.
“I’ve read the whole series five times; I’m on my sixth,” said 13-year-old Ashley Weiland of Chehalis. She and her stepmother Amanda Weiland stopped by Midway Cinema on Friday afternoon to buy advance tickets for an evening show.
Amy Perry, 41, and her daughter Amelia Justice, 20, both of Centralia, bought advance tickets for New Moon on Friday as well.
“My other daughter is at home right now jumping up and down because we got tickets,” Perry said.
Heather Perry is 14 and a big fan of the Twilight series. She and her mother have read the books multiple times and own a copy of the first film.
By 3 p.m., tickets for the 8:10 and 9:10 showings of New Moon were sold out at Midway Cinema. And the early evening shows were filling up fast.
The midnight show at Midway was played in all 10 auditoriums. Tickets for opening night were sold out by Wednesday evening.
“We broke all sorts of fun records,” said general theater manager Michael Henninger.
In fact, the Chehalis theater broke the record for largest opening-night crowd within the entire company on Friday, Henninger said.
The first Twilight film, which came out last November, brought about 500 people to opening night, Spearin said. The movie made $69.6 million worldwide in its opening weekend, according to Examiner online.
This comes as no surprise. The book series sold 50 million copies worldwide and 7.7 million copies in the United States, according to the publisher’s Web site.
Book lovers seem to have different tastes than movie goers, however. When the book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out in 2005, it sold 9 million copies in the United States and Britain combined within the first 24 hours, according to MSNBC.
Dian McClurg is a former Chronicle reporter and current freelance writer living near Silver Creek. She can be reached at dlmcclurg@tds.net.
