Also, the other important element going into the Dead movies is that they are intelligent movies. They tackle real issues along with creating solid characters. It doesn't fall into genre conventions. A lot of time and care were spent on the script and the performances and not just the effects. That is certainly something you won't see in Transformers 2 or New Moon.

@mfan: I'm sorry, were you complaining about someone looking too old to be playing a teenager as your chief complaint at An Education? Did you see Robert Pattinson in New Moon? Though I guess technically he wasn't playing a teenager but actually a 100 year old man. Also, art house films are made for the audience. It's just the filmmaker tends to take more care in the production. Who has the $20 million dollars or so just to get themselves off? The films also tend to be hitting a smaller demographic. Sometimes they cross over, sometimes they don't. But there is definite concern for the audience.

It's not like an action movie when someone will inevitably be blown up, get shot, beat up, thrown around, sacrifice themselves for others, etc. It should be meaningful and truthful to real life. Sure someone can die in a car accident or drop dead adruptly from some disease they or no one knew they had. Instead we have a movie like "Pay it Foward" where the whole message is silenced by killing the character meant to spread the message. What?

Truthfully I'd rather aim for something in between overloads of action and silliness or a poor art drama. Take Romero's Dawn Of The Dead (yes this is the best example I can come up with) for instance. You get a huge sense of feeling for these characters, who are just people trying to survive against…well, a partially action and horror setting. Especially in Day Of The Dead, where you know pretty much every character in and out, and they are all very important…then you get to see Zombies devour all of the bad ones, some of the goods. etc. Best payoff imaginable in my opinion.

Although the above scenario is speculative. It shows that blockbuster titles ARE possibly in jeopardy. How can anybody doubt that when New Moon has done nothing but surprise on the upside so far.

1. Girls want romance and will get it vicariously if they have to.
2. The conventional wisdom of waiting two years between film sequel efforts in order
to "build up demand" can lose badly compared to striking while the iron is hot.
3. Although it's easier to figure out what kind of movie project will bring out men,
female movies are potentially more profitable since women are more easily able to
convince guys to accompany them to female skewing films than vice versa.
4. You don't need films with huge budgets to make huge money.

New Moon's success is sad because the movie sucks. It's as bad as Transformers 2 as far as my opinion goes, and Transformers 2 success is equally sad.

I don't think, though, that New Moon can make $800 million worldwide. I may be wrong, but I think this movie will take a enourmous drop and should consider itself lucky to make over $300 million total (in the US). Double that and we have a $600 million dollars worldwide cume, which is HUGE, but not Batman or Spider-man's standard.

PS: 2012 worldwide cume is at $450 million right now, you can fix the number on your article Laremy. 2012 is also very popular, huge oversears, so who knows, maybe it'll do bigger nukbers than New Moon worldwide? You never know…

Again with the demographics. Certain demographics are aimed at; teenagers mostly because they are the ones who rush to see every remotely good movie they will be at least somewhat entertained by.
But to say that ONLY that demographic enjoyed Twilight, New Moon, Transformers 1 and 2, etc.well maybe that's not what's being sad but I'm sure a lot of people seem to think this.
Half the people I know are in their 40's and all of them at least found Transformers 2 to be somewhat funny and very enjoyable, entertaining and pretty interesting.
I've known plently of both men and women in their 30's, 40's, and 50's who at least liked Twilight (as in not loved it).
Pretty much all of them found G.I. Joe to be dissapointing on some level.

Now breaking up with her…apparently you have to hope she won't commit suicide.

Truthfully, the only indictments against society going are the people who want to hate on everything that isn't one of their even-less-believable that Twilight art dramas that put most people to sleep, and make others wonder what the point was.
I mean at least the Transformers and people are fighting for the fate of the planet (and their lives). What were the people in Revolutionary Road doing? Yelling at each other and then one kills herself? Vomiting just thinking about it…

Also, apparently no one remembers being a depressed teenager. I mean what teenager isn't slightly depressed to some extent?

First of all, it's just the opening day. New Moon will probably make somewhere in the neighborhood of $300mil domestically. That's far more than any of us were expecting, but that's not blow-my-brains out-of-this-world phenomenal. It's just really good. Now if it made $500mil, THAT would be phenomenal.

And let's say it did make $500mil. Still an indictment against society? Hardly. Rather, it's an insight. Why did it make so much? Because there's something the audience loves about the romance (and maybe the characters, though I do agree with Roger Ebert that in Twilight the characters are more shells that the audience projects themselves into, which is probably why many men don't like Twilight, because I can't imagine them wanting to be in Edward or Jacob's position; heck, same for Bella and the women who don't like Twilight).

Personally, I think Twilight is one of the worst examples of love for teenagers ever written. But I've read all four books and I continue to watch the movies. Why? My excuse is this: There's something irresistible about love stories that are SO ridiculous, yet told in SUCH earnest. The only other story to satisfy me on that front is Star Wars Episode II. :D I think Twilight is hilarious in all the wrong ways, and it's SUCH fun to make fun of it… but only because I've seen it. I couldn't make fun of it if I hadn't seen it, just like I can't make fun of Hannah Montana and Jonas Bros., however much I'm not interested in them, because I haven't listened to them and can't pass judgment. I hate everyone who says they hate Twilight if they haven't seen it or read the books. What they SHOULD say is: "I have no interest in Twilight. It doesn't sound like my thing." They have no right to say: "I don't like it," because they frankly know nothing about it.

Just because New Moon worked for people who enjoyed the novel, doesn't mean that the overwhelming shortcomings of the film don't exist. That's like saying Britney Spears and Lady GaGa are quality vocalists just because their fans enjoy them and think so.

You can't decry opinion toward the movie just because certain demographics enjoyed it. That same logic applies for movies like Transformers and 2012, but for some reason goes out the door because it was based on a novel that people enjoyed.

edit: oh, well that makes sense. i just read that you actually enjoyed New Moon

And I think Titanic would've still made as much as it did because everyone saw Titanic, including kids, woman in their 30's, others were curious to see why it was so great, boys who find kate Winslet hot, girls who find Leonardo attractive. etc. It had extreme appeal that for some reason, after more than a decade, nobody remembers and/or gets.

Having low expectations for Spider-Man 3 makes perfect sense because Spider Man 2 wasn't very good and Spider-Man was average.

Twilight
What impresses me about Twilight is not the books or the movies, but
the ardent fan following. I don't get it, but it IS impressive!

The Blind Side
It's nice to back a winner, but only commenter JAB guessed it might
beat 2012 for second place. My guess is this movie will do well the
entire holiday season, easily passing $100 million. Laremy opined,
once, that Hollywood would be forced to cut budgets in the future to
make up for the reality of declining DVD sales and rental revenue.
But many people going to the movies WANT to be impressed. One way to
impress them is to make movies people actually want to see. Are we
going to see an end to Hollywood self-indulgence, and a return to
mainstream sensabilities? Thinking back, perhaps we've already seen
the beginnings of this trend. I highly recommend this movie.

2012
I thought no competition would equal an exceptional hold, but there
were actually more guys in the theater during my matinee screening of
The Blind Side than there were women, including two father/son teams.
TBS is looking like a date movie too.

Precious
Despite it's early numbers, it's hard to believe this movie can make
more money than Crash.($54m) In fact, the same girl who insisted I
watch her DVD of Crash, just told me she was going to see Precious.

Planet 51
I thought this movie could take over from A Christmas Carol. Is kids
who have to be taken to the movies by their parents, one area of the
box office where there is normally a hard ceiling on total gross? In
other words, did ACC and P51 split the kids money or has ACC had a
normal drop, and P51 had a normal miss?

Update on New Moon
Guys, I think we have seriously underestimated the female audience. People dissing this film keep calling it driven by kids or teens. They were definitely there, but there were also a LOT of older women! And the vast majority of the older women brought a guy! The only group not represented were teen and younger guys, meaning there were none at all. Still, this is looking more like a three quadrant movie. If the publishers have been busy expanding the market with translations of the books to other languages, the top grossing films could have trouble holding their own.

I feel like the only person psyched for ninja assassin. Is the title too vague?

Thanksgiving weekend is a tough one to predict. I forgot that when last week I said new moon would plummet 65 percent. Now 50 seems feasible. 2012 falling like 15 seems right. Hopefully christmas carol gets a good thanksgiving bump, for robert zemeckis' sake.