Twilight: Breaking Dawn opening earns obscene amount of money

According to early box-office estimates, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, the fourth movie in the obscenely popular Twilight franchise, earned a staggering $72 million when it hit theaters Friday, making it the third highest-grossing opening day in box-office history. In terms of box-office openings, Breaking Dawn is preceded only by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2, which raked in $91.1 million when it opened earlier this year, as well as The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which made $72.7 million when it opened in 2009. The estimate also takes into account the $30.3 million in box-office receipts from midnight screenings on Thursday.

Although reviews for the film have been lukewarm, averaging to a meager 27% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, EW estimates that the film's weekend box-office take will approach a mind-boggling $141 million, which would be the fifth-highest opening weekend in history. If you're like me and you have only seen the Twilight films whilst tipping back a jug of Carlo Rossi, these numbers might seem a bit shocking to you, but if you're one of the thousands of Twihards psyched about seeing Robert Pattinson's jaws liberate a vampire fetus from Kristen Stewart's blood-engorged belly, $141 million makes total sense. After all, with that kind of money, you could buy approximately 17.6 million jugs of Carlo Rossi, or approximately $7 million sensible Banana Republic button-downs for poor, shirtless Taylor Lautner.