Twitter Box Office Update

Total tweets for November 20th Openers

The Twilight Saga: New Moon simply exploded/zoomed/skyrocketed/amazed (pick your adjective) today on Twitter. Quite simply put i've never seen seen anything like it for a film in my time of watching Twitter, even before I formally started to keep numbers. 94,789 tweets in one day is pretty jaw-dropping. This is more than a movie, its a cultural phenomenon. To put it into perspective, that is:

• The record for most tweets Monday (beating Paranormal Activity 's 15,321 tweets).
• More tweets than all films on the Monday of their release since September 18th (27 films - 36,294 tweets).
• Monday's Twilight number is double the full week record for tweets also. Paranormal Activity managed to secure 46,729 tweets for its full Monday - Thursday pre-release week.
• It is on track to have more tweets during this Monday to Thursday period than every single wide release film since September 18th (27 films - 207,755 tweets).
• It received more than a tweet a second on Monday.

I can't say it is a complete surprise since it has been a trending topic of Twitter forever it seems and with today being its actual gala premiere Twihard fans were out in full force supporting Team Edward and Team Jacob. The film plays directly to the heart of female Twitter users, add in the heap of spam that opportunists are mixing in to try to profit and you have a recipe for a huge Friday ratio. It really is hard to say what it might be since there really have been no parallels, but it be very surprised if it went above the 7,000 set by Paranormal Activity . That gives it a low end of about $40 million for Friday based on these tweets with the possibility to go much much higher. Let's see what Tuesday looks like and how much the number was inflated by the premiere today.

Planet 51 was an ant to the New Moon monstrosity with only 242 tweets. By comparison Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs had 385 tweets, and Astro Boy had 378 tweets after their pre-release Monday. Planet 51 is opening in quite a few less screens than Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs which will undoubtedly drive its ratio up. Monday's tweets accounted for 16.81% of Cloudy 's total for the week, so if Planet 51 follows the same path it should end up with around 1,600 tweets for the week. If this trajectory proves to be right it might be on course for about half of Cloudy 's opening tally. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Lastly, Sandra Bullock's The Blind Side actually performed really well on Monday, bringing in 676 tweets. Law Abiding Citizen managed 623 tweets during the same period on its opening week, and Jennifer Aniston's Love Happens gained 177 tweets. I'd expect its ratio to be more in line with Love Happens ' but a lot will depends on how it performs during the week, its looking good for low to mid teens based on this number though.

Check back tomorrow to see just how wild the New Moon hoopla gets.

Twitter tracking history.

The ratio is the number of tweets per $1 million of Friday Box Office gross. A film with 1,000 tweets and a $10 million Friday would therefore have a ratio of 100. In general, films that appeal to very young or older audiences have lower ratios since those audiences are not big users of Twitter. By comparison, films that appeal to younger audiences (18-35) have much higher ratios since those audiences are much more active users of Twitter.