The Twilight movies made a staggering amount of money at the box office between Twilight’s 2008 release and 2012’s Breaking Dawn Part 2. Despite their bad reviews, the Twilight movies earned hundreds of millions of dollars apiece and made stars of their lead actors. However, no vampire-themed series before or since has been able to match the impressive impact of the Twilight saga. Twilight’s closest competitor earned only a fraction of its box office haul, while many successful vampire movies never even gain a single sequel, let alone an entire series. There are numerous reasons that these projects couldn’t repeat the Twilight saga’s success, ranging from target demographics to release timing, to the nature of the stories themselves.
However, despite how difficult it is to find a consistently popular topic that audiences are always willing to return to, there are a few themes that viewers can’t seem to resist over the decades. Vampire movies have proven surprisingly reliable in on this level, in regards to their persistent popularity. Of these movies, the Twilight saga remains comfortably the most financially successful.
The Twilight movies made a staggering amount of money at the box office between Twilight’s 2008 release and 2012’s Breaking Dawn Part 2. Despite their bad reviews, the Twilight movies earned hundreds of millions of dollars apiece and made stars of their lead actors. However, no vampire-themed series before or since has been able to match the impressive impact of the Twilight saga. Twilight’s closest competitor earned only a fraction of its box office haul, while many successful vampire movies never even gain a single sequel, let alone an entire series. There are numerous reasons that these projects couldn’t repeat the Twilight saga’s success, ranging from target demographics to release timing, to the nature of the stories themselves.
With the original movie grossing $400 million worldwide, its first sequel New Moon earning $700 million, Eclipse earning $698 million, Breaking Dawn Part One making $712 million, and Breaking Dawn Part Two making $829 million, the Twilight saga left cinemas with a total gross of over $3.3 billion. The most underrated Twilight movie, Eclipse, was the least financially successful of the series and still ranks as the 134th highest-grossing movie ever made (for a frame of reference, that is a higher ranking than the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie The Curse of the Black Pearl). The saga also managed the rare feat of earning (except for Eclipse) more money with each new sequel that the series released, with the final Twilight movie making more than double what the original Twilight earned.
With the original movie grossing $400 million worldwide, its first sequel New Moon earning $700 million, Eclipse earning $698 million, Breaking Dawn Part One making $712 million, and Breaking Dawn Part Two making $829 million, the Twilight saga left cinemas with a total gross of over $3.3 billion. The most underrated Twilight movie, Eclipse, was the least financially successful of the series and still ranks as the 134th highest-grossing movie ever made (for a frame of reference, that is a higher ranking than the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie The Curse of the Black Pearl). The saga also managed the rare feat of earning (except for Eclipse) more money with each new sequel that the series released, with the final Twilight movie making more than double what the original Twilight earned.
While numerous factors made the franchise’s success possible, including a lot of canny business decisions, the fact remains that the Twilight movies arrived at exactly the right time and this played a huge part in their outsized success. Paramount’s canceled Twilight movie adaptation delayed the arrival of the series, meaning the first Twilight movie arrived after the publication of the final novel in the saga as opposed to after the first book of the franchise. Much like the Harry Potter movies managed to follow their target demographic (9–12 year-olds) through their teenage years with gradually more mature sequels, the Twilight movies capitalized on the short period wherein preteens and teens were unashamed about their love of the series.
The saga was soon considered cringe-worthy as teens aged out of its target demographic but, unlike later franchises such as Divergent, the Twilight franchise’s creators had the good sense to shoot and release the movies as quickly as possible so few viewers aged out while they were in cinemas. As such, the infamously misjudged finale of Breaking Dawn Part 2 was the moment when many viewers decided they no longer enjoyed Twilight, thanks to its relative lack of stakes. This was also, conveniently enough for the studio, the moment that the saga ended, meaning Twilight audiences could leave the theater willing to say goodbye to the series having also already parted ways with almost a
