If you are a fan of The Twilight Saga, I don’t have to tell you what a big day this is. It’s probably been circled by a red heart on your day planners since, um, last November. For box office reporters, however, this is a big day for another reason. The release of New Moon at 12:01 am this morning had the potential to overturn the midnight box office record set by The Dark Knight back in July of 2008.  New Moon already had the record for midnight presales so the only question left to ponder was how high Bella and Edward would go. No official numbers from Summit are yet available but it looks like that $18.4 million record The Dark Knight claimed has indeed fallen.

According to Variety, estimates for the 3,514 North American New Moon theatres put the film’s midnight total at $26.3 million.  This means that The Dark Knight opening day record of $67.1 million is in danger of succumbing to Twilight mania. We all knew it would be huge, but huge enough to beat The Dark Knight? That’s a horse of another color. A huge horse.  We’ll keep you updated as the weekend numbers start to come in.

If the world really does end on December 21, 2012, at least one guy is gonna go out happy. Director Roland Emmerich saw his latest disaster epic rake in an estimated $65 million domestically and over $160 abroad for a grand total of $220 million worldwide. That puts the film in the top ten international launches of all time. I always thought that Sony had made an odd choice by scheduling 2012 for a mid-November release. That’s the time of the year that we usually see more high-brow fare in theatres… and teenaged vampires, of course.  But it looks like the studio knew exactly what they were doing. Not only did 2012 manage to blow away all its early estimates, the tsunami of money the film is surfing this weekend brought a taste of summer blockbuster back to the box office.

It looks like Roland Emmerich had at least one more catastrophic hit left in him. 2012, the latest paean to exploding landmarks from the director of Independence Day, brought in a whopping $23.7 million on its opening day on 3,404 screens. That’s the highest opening ever for Emmerich and it puts 2012 on track for a weekend total of over $55 million - a figure that the box office hasn’t seen since mid-July. Second place went to Disney’s A Christmas Carol, down a reasonable 38% with $5.5 million. And though estimates have The Men Who Stare at Goats barely edging out Lee Daniels’s Precious for Friday’s third place, the momentum is all on the side of the indie sensation. The drama doubled its total gross just one day after expanding into 175 theatres. Check back tomorrow for full details on these films plus news on the box office fate of new releases Pirate Radio and Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

You know it’s the end of the year when there are more new releases per week than any one person could reasonably care about. Or maybe I should just speak for myself.  The first full weekend of November featured four new wide releases all boasting some major star power: “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” with Jim Carrey (times four), “The Box” with Cameron Diaz, “The Fourth Kind” with Milla Jovovich and “The Men Who Stare at Goats” with George Clooney.  And though no one film can be said to be a total washout this weekend, the A-listers fell short compared to the stunningly successful debut of Lee Daniels’ “Precious”. The indie sensation opened in just 18 theatres, taking in an estimated $100,000 per screen to make it the most-lucrative limited release of all-time.

Just five days after Halloween it’s beginning to look, um… a bit like Christmas at the box office.  “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” opened in the widest release yet for a 3D feature on Friday: 2,035 screens including 181 in IMAX. Disney also booked a few 2D screens a grand total of 3,683 theatres. So with all that exposure, and those extra-fat 3D ticket prices, it comes as no surprise to find Ebenezer Scrooge on top with an estimated Friday total of $9 million. More of a surprise is the strong second place showing of new entry “The Fourth Kind” with Milla Jovovich. The alien-abduction pic took in just under $5 million after opening in 2,529 theatres. George Clooney and “The Men Who Stare at Goats” came in third with $4.5 million from 2,443 theatres and Richard Kelly’s “The Box” barely edged out the “Paranormal Activity” phenomenon to take fifth place with just under $3 million. Check back tomorrow for details and snarky comments on all of the week’s new releases.

Sony spent a good amount of time on Saturday trying to dial back expectations for their Michael Jackson concert documentary “This Is It”. Perhaps they should have thought of that before they helped set those expectations in the first place? After failing to produce “great numbers” in its first three days in theatres, “This Is It” did manage to notch first place over the weekend with an estimated $21.3 million from its 3,404 domestic engagements. Not bad for a concert movie, but when you consider that recent number one films like “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Zombieland” managed to pull in over $30 million over the same time period, you have to wonder what all that hype was about.

I almost never get to look like a box office sage, but I’m gonna go ahead and pat myself on the back for predicting that the whole Michael Jackson “This Is It” premiere smelled more of hype than of actual box office potential. As Wednesday’s premiere inched closer and the projected totals got higher and higher I felt a pang of doubt - could this movie actually make $250 million worldwide in its first five days as AEG had boasted? I needn’t have worried. In fact, it now looks like even my modest $54 million projection was too high. After bringing in an estimated $7.5 million on Friday “This Is It” seems destined for the $30 million range by the end of its first 5 days - especially with lower than average Saturday figures expected thanks to Halloween’s inconvenient scheduling. “This Is It” will still have enough hype left to carry the weekend, but with “Paranormal Activity” now in more than 2,400 theatres, the gap between the two films will be smaller than Sony would like. Check back tomorrow for full details on the movie thriller that wasn’t.

Spike TV has posted a sort of new trailer Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”.  Though most of the footage will look familiar to anyone who caught the teaser trailer that Disney released a few months back, new footage is mixed throughout including extended shots of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter that hint at how spectacular the film will look in its Disney Digital 3D and IMAX formats.  Peek down the rabbit hole after the jump.

From the annals of remakes we don’t really care about: Actress Keira Knightley, who has been informally attached to the remake of 1964’s classic musical “My Fair Lady” for nearly two years, is now formally attached along with her “Atonement” director Joe Wright who will helm the project. The coveted role of Eliza Doolittle, made famous in George Cukor’s film by the great Audrey Hepburn, will go to Knightley despite rumors that Scarlett Johansson was being considered for the part by the film’s producers.  Details after the jump.

Friday’s box office results spelled trouble for the once mighty “Saw” franchise in the form of Paramount’s upstart horror pick-up “Paranormal Activity”. Luckily for film fans, Saturday’s attendance rates could offer no quarter to the fearsome Jigsaw killer who finished outside of first place for the first time since the original “Saw” debuted back in 2004. Playing in about 1,000 fewer venues, “Paranormal” didn’t just manage to keep its lead throughout the three day frame, its solid performance also kept those “Saw VI” numbers down to about half of what the film’s predecessors averaged from 2005 to 2008.

“Paranormal Activity” continued its impressive run on Friday as the horror phenom managed to wrestle first place away from the “Saw” franchise for the first time in four years. “Saw VI” could only scare up an estimated $7 million from its 3,036 venues which means that any hope of another $30 million weekend for the Lionsgate series is now lost. So sad. “Paranormal” went from 760 screens last weekend to just shy of 2,000 on Friday, earning another $7.6 million in the process. The pre-holiday week was not nearly as kind to Friday’s also-rans. Relativity/Universal’s “Cirque de Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant” fell short of the top five with $2.2 million, proving that sticking ‘vampire’ in the title is not enough to lure “Twilight” fans away from the coming of “New Moon”. The news was even worse for Summit/Imagi’s “Astro Boy” which could only manage a $1.8 million debut from over 3,000 screens.  Last weekend’s top earner, “Where the Wild Things Are”, fell a disappointing 64% to third place while Fox Searchlight’s “Amelia”, on 818 screens, fell off the radar altogether. Check back tomorrow for complete details and the final three day estimates.

You probably knew that the massive success of “Twilight” last November led Summit Entertainment to quickly secure the rights to all four books in Stephanie Meyer’s series.  You probably also knew that the studio went to great lengths to get the first three films in front of cameras before the franchise could lose any of its hysterical momentum.  But there’s fast and then there’s really fast.  Before Summit has even officially greenlit Meyer’s fourth and final novel, “Breaking Dawn”, a casting website has already posted info on how actors can secure a role in “Breaking Dawn”.  Details after the jump.

UPDATE: Summit is telling us the story isn’t true. Hit the jump to read the original report.

Director Bryan Singer has gone on the record about his desire to return to his most lucrative franchise - Fox’s “X-Men” series.  The director of both “X-Men” and “X2: X-Men United” told reporters in South Korea this weekend that he’s been “talking to Fox” about returning to the director’s chair for his third mutant movie.  Details after the jump.

This could be a first.  Just weeks after winning an Emmy Award for her work on AMC’s “Mad Men”, writer Kater Gordon has been fired from the series.  Gordon shared her award with “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner for season two’s finale “Meditations in an Emergency”, one of the four episodes from the series that were nominated this year.  More after the jump.

Despite overwhelmingly negative reviews, audiences came out in force to see Vince Vaughn, Kristin Bell and Jon Favreau frolic on the beach in “Couples Retreat” this weekend.  The PG-13 comedy bested Universal’s highest hopes by bringing in over $35 million in its first three days.  But despite all that cash, “Couples Retreat” is not this weekend’s big box office story.  That honor goes to the independent horror movie “Paranormal Activity” - the spiritual beneficiary of the shaky hand-cam and savvy marketing plan that “Blair Witch” built.

This is why Vince Vaughn is known as box office gold.  A typical Vaughn comedy has a reasonable price tag and reaps big returns… if not always big laughs.  The actor made the new bosses over at Universal very happy on Friday as “Couples Retreat” opened to over $12.3 million from 3,000 screens.  It didn’t hurt that the PG-13 comedy was the only wide release of the week, of course.  Meanwhile, Sony is still feeling the love with “Zombieland” at number two and their 3D toon-that-could, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”, losing little monetary momentum at number three.  But the real momentum this week belongs to Paramount.  The studio’s indie horror pick-up “Paranormal Activity” moved from midnight-only screenings in a handful of cities to 159 venues (at all hours) on Friday.  With marketing being handled mainly by fans and social networkers, the studio can just sit back and count the cash as it rolls in.  Already the $11,000 pic has earned $3.7 million total.  Check back tomorrow to see exactly how much word-of-mouth will be worth this time.