The Holiday Season has officially started for the film Industry after Skyfall's tremendous weekend opening of $87.8 million. However, the latest Bond film is only the first of a few major blockbusters set to take over the box office in 2012. In just a few days, the final installment of Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 will release. That will be followed almost month later by The Hobbit, the first installment in a new prequel trilogy to the successful Lord of the Rings films.
According to Reuters, The Hobbit tickets went on sale this week on Fandango and quickly outsold Skyfall and Twilight instantly with 33 percent of the tickets sold online going toward The Hobbit. Twilight dropped to third after holding first place since October 1st, lending speculation as to whether this film might not be able to win the holiday box office.
The last three Twilight movies have averaged $290 million at the Box Office. The second installment New Moon made $296 million. The follow-up Eclipse made $300 million and is the highest grossing Twilight film to date. The first part of Breaking Dawn made only $281 million is currently the third highest grossing film. However, final installments tend to perform better than their predecessors the majority of the time. The final Harry Potter film made $381 million, over $60 million more than the second highest grossing installment.
However, The Hobbit is the first Lord of the Rings movie in 10 years and its predecessors all grossed at least $315 million in 2001-03. With the inflation of ticket sales and 3D sales, EOnline feels that the film could close in on $400 million. That figure would have been astounding back in 2001-2003, when only one film made $400 domestically in those three years. In 2012 alone three films (The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games) have already breached the $400 million mark.
These two films are the current contenders to win the holiday season but only time will tell which will win the box office.