According to estimates over at Variety, The Twilight Saga: New Moon](The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) - Movie | Moviefone) failed to top *The Dark Knight’s *three-day opening weekend record of $158 million, bringing what I’m sure will be a huge sigh of relief to all those folks (and there’s lots of them) who felt the film was in no way deserving of these historic milestones. Instead,after clinching the Best Midnight Opening record and Best Opening Day record, New Moon will have to settle for third on the Best Opening Weekend list after walking away with a pretty astonishing $140 million when it was all said and done.
If that number holds up (and it should), the film will replace Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End for third place on the list of all-time best opening weekends (domestic), and will settle in behind **only Spider-Man 3 (second) and The Dark Knight (first). Still, with $130 million, New Moon more than doubled Twilight’s opening weekend ($69 million), so if the franchise remains on that pace, there’s a good chance *The Twilight Saga: Eclipse *will indeed snatch the opening weekend record from The Dark Knight when it hits theaters on June 30th… that is, unless Iron Man 2 doesn’t get to it first.