Vampire Movie, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” Grosses $161.2 Million

“The Twilight Sage: Eclipse” has grossed $161.2 million since Wednesday, a breathtaking amount, even for a vampire movie. “That’s one of the biggest five-day debuts in Hollywood history, previously surpassed by just a handful of films including “The Dark Knight” and last summer’s sequel to “Transformers”, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Vampires and werewolves, it seems, are nearly everywhere on TV and in movie theaters. The CW network offers “The Vampire Diaries” and HBO has a hit program called “True Blood”.

Dracula, now over a century old, may be having his best year. He was created in 1897 by author Bram StokerThe current breed of vampires have gone beyond Dracula’s simple “bit and bleed” habit. The newer vampires have love lives, fight werewolves, and have their own home pages on Facebook. Some even use Twitter. They are so active, it is a wonder that they are “undead” at all.

The vampire fetish is almost impossible to understand, at least among mature adults. The fans for the creatures are mostly teenagers drawn to a world where they can live forever, even if they have to spend the sunny part of the day at rest in coffins. The next evolution of the vampire story is likely to be that the coffins are dispensed with and bleeding humans will become a 24-hour-a-day affair.

The balance of the big box office winners where “The Airbender”  in second place with a $52.3 million take, followed by “Toy Story 3”, “Grown-Ups”, Knight and Day”, “Karate Kid”, and “The A-Team”.

It seems that films about regular people do not stand a chance.

Douglas A. McIntyre