New Twilight film Eclipses box office rivals

The latest Twilight movie sailed past the $100 million (Dh367.2m) mark during its third day at the North American box office, and was forecast to approach a record-breaking $200 million by the end of the Independence Day holiday weekend, according to estimates issued Saturday.

The Twilight Saga: The Eclipse, the eagerly anticipated third instalment in the vampire romance series – and out this Thursday, July 8 in cinemas across the UAE – sold about $121.4 million worth of tickets from Wednesday to Friday, said distributor Summit Entertainment.

For the traditional Friday-Sunday portion, the privately owned studio forecast sales of $80.2 million, and a four-day total of $106.1 million with inclusion of the Monday holiday.

That would take its six-day haul to $198.9 million.

As for the other films in the Twilight series, The Twilight Saga: New Moon earned $179 million in its first six days during a non-holiday period in November.

A year earlier, the six-day haul for the first film, Twilight, was $88 million.

View The Twilight Saga: The Eclipse trailer here:

As for the UAE market, James Mangold’s Knight and Day proved to be flavour of the weekend, shooting to the top of the UAE film charts, according to CineStar Cinemas.

Quite surprising, considering it was highly predicted that Pixar’s latest animation Toy Story 3 would make it to the top. Instead it only made number two in the UAE box-office.

Back to Knight and Day, in this action comedy, starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz – their second collaboration since 2001’s Vanilla Sky – a wholesome, Midwestern woman (Diaz) accidentally gets involved with an international super spy (Cruise) and is forced to flee the country with him while he protects a dangerous new piece of technology.

View Knight & Day’s trailer her

Meanwhile, Bollywood romantic comedy, I Hate Luv Storys, starring Imran Khan and Sonam Kapoor, entered at number three.

UAE BOX-OFFICE TOP TEN – JULY 2-3

1- Knight and Day
2- Toy Story 3
3- I Hate Luv Storys
4- The Karate Kid
5- The A-Team
6- The Goods
7- Shrek Forver After
8- Prince of Persia
9- Street Dance 3D
10- The Devil’s tomb

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