Breaking Dawn Box Office: New Twilight Movie Has Third Highest Opening Day

Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart, and Robert Pattinson are on their way to setting a few box office records. The new Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn, brought in $72 million from domestic tickets on opening day, and another $66 million worldwide.

Breaking Dawn‘s box office performance on opening day was the third highest in history. According to the Hollywood Reporter, only Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Twilight: New Moon had bigger opening days. When New Moon was released two years ago, it brought in $72.7 million on opening day.

MTV reports that midnight showings helped Breaking Dawn to set box-office records. Breaking Dawn played in more than 3,000 theaters at 12:01 on Friday morning, before adding another thousand location by mid-morning. The new Twilight movie brought in $30.25 million from midnight showings alone.

According to Bloomberg, industry experts are predicting that Breaking Dawn will gross $300 million during the film’s domestic theater run.

Breaking Dawn may be a huge money maker, but critics aren’t too impressed. The movie currently has a score of just 27% rating from more than 136 critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Dana Stevens at Slate writes:

“By any normal standard, this is a terrible movie, with stilted dialogue and leaden pacing — every 15 minutes or so, the action stops for a musical montage involving slow-motion handsomeness. But the Twilight saga stopped being normal a long time ago.”

Of course, Twilight fans disagree. Fans gave the new Twilight movie a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Were you surprised by Breaking Dawn‘s box office performance? What about the reviews?