The question this weekend was never if Twilight: New Moon would open at number one on the New Zealand charts, it was just a matter of how big that opening would be. Real big it turns out, real big.

New Moon broke the six year old record, held by Lord Of The Rings: The Return of The King, to completely dominate the charts with the biggest opening weekend in New Zealand history. Astonishingly, the teen vampire phenomenon managed to suck in over $2.6 Million while playing in 23 less screens than the conclusion to the epic fantasy trilogy did in 2003.

Mirroring the enormous opening Stateside, (Over $140 Million and third biggest of all time) New Moon has performed above even the loftiest of predictions and is already on track to being one of the biggest films of all-time at the Kiwi box office. Just how big the film will be is almost totally dependent on repeat viewings from Twi-hards, as the film has seen little traction outside of its enormous fanbase.

Twilight New Moon continued a bumper year at the Kiwi box office as three of the top five openings now come in 2009. With Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince at 3^rd and Transformers Revenge of the Fallen in 4^th, 2009 is on track to shatter the all-time yearly record as well.

Sliding down into second place in its second week of release, disaster porn 2012 shrank a respectable 46% to flood over $1.7 Million in total receipts. This Is It continued to play reasonably well despite much of its audience being eroded by the Robert Pattison flick and inched closer to $4 Million, a massive return for a documentary.

My Sister’s Keeper collected another $133,000 and continues to perform well as an alternative to the heavily hyped November blockbusters. Look for the Cameron Diaz tear-jerker to end up with around $1.4 Million. Following in fifth place and managed to hold a lot of its audience was the CGI A Christmas Carol. Holding up well since its disappointing debut three weeks ago, the Carrey/Zemeckis  title is slowly establishing a niche in cinemas which should see it hold on to screens for the lucrative Christmas season.

Julie and Julia followed in sixth and jumped over the $1.5 Million mark. The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus maintained seventh as it continues to play well both for Heath Ledger and Terry Gilliam fans. The Vintner ‘s Luck collapsed into eighth place, once again maintaining the worst screen average in the top ten and will probably drop out completely next week. In direction comparison, An Education stayed in the top ten for the seventh week in a row as it slipped a mere 19% and lept over $700,000.

Rounding out the top ten this week was the French action/drama Flame and Citron which had a moderate opening to add to its impressive festival total. Next week all eyes will still rest on New Moon as we find out just how front-loaded the title is, also opening, but with no hope of a first place debut is Sony Pictures Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and Ricky Gervais’s latest comedy The Invention Of Lying.