Eclipse finishes 3rd weekend with $13.5M, approaches $265M domestic

UPDATE SUNDAY, JULY 18 11:00 AM:

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse finished fourth in its third weekend, taking in an estimated $13.497M from 4,001 locations with a per theater average of $3,373 for the Friday-Sunday period. This increases the film’s domestic cumulative total to $264,868,417 through its first 19 days of release. Topping the charts was Inception, which opened with $60.4M. Despicable Me was next with $32.734M followed by The Sorcerer’s Apprentice with $17.4M.

The daily breakdown includes Friday’s $4.5M, Saturday’s $5.1M, and Sunday’s $3.8M. Overall, the 3-day weekend of July 16-18 was down 58% from the 3-day weekend of July 9-11. For those who wish to compare, New Moon dropped 64% in its third weekend.

These numbers are not “actuals,” meaning they are only official estimates based on early reports. For those who are new to the box office numbers game, it may seem odd to have these figures when Sunday isn’t even over yet. But it is standard procedure to have weekend totals announced at this time. After the Saturday box office totals come in on Sunday morning, studios always estimate Sunday and come up with a weekend projection. Therefore, Sunday and weekend figures can only be estimates at this point.

The actual numbers won’t be known until Monday. But many years and literally thousands of projections have yielded formulas that allow the industry to predict fairly closely what Sunday will be based on Saturday’s numbers and, therefore, what the weekend will look like. The actual numbers that come in after the weekend are usually not too far off from the estimates made on Sunday. They usually adjust slightly up or down but are rarely far off.

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