The idea of Twilight coming out ahead of the Muppets sickens me. I knew it was a foregone conclusion, but it doesn't make it any less annoying. But I look at it this way. Ten years from now no one will remember Twilight while the Muppets will still be chugging along winning new fans and entertaining old ones.
It's popular with an annoying fan base, sure. That's all it needs to be to get that kind of Box Office. The Muppet's TRUE telling of value or worth is if it could come in before Happy Feet, Arthur Christmas, and Hugo. It's a family movie, and it has family movies as competition. Twilight is far too sexual to be a family movie. Maybe something suburban moms take their tweens to, but not younger kids. And let's not forget, Muppets doesn't have an international world wide release just yet. It seems it's going to make budget or slightly better over the weekened. Hopefully the Wednesday spike isn't just from Muppet die hards that wanted to see it on opening day... Something tells me Twilight's only going to get in a couple good weeks because everyone who wants to see it will see it in those two weeks.
Twilight's kinda the reason why Monsters University was bumped from the November 2012 line up... Muppets wouldn't have really fared too well later than the release date it got. It would have been lost in the summer shuffle, if it was released during Christmas, it would've been clobbered by CGI Chipmunks (like Princess and the Frog was). Somehow, the competition seemed stronger in November/December this year than all of Summer... I mean, there was a month or so gap between Kung Fu Panda and Cars, the two most anticipated kid's movie franchises... and even then, they were spaced apart from any of the Super Hero movies. The only kids movies to do poorly were ones that were low key like Judy Moody (who expected that to do well) and some Selena Gomez Prince and the Pauper knockoff. Sadly, also Winnie the Pooh, but that was destined for better things on home video anyway.
So, the movie's doing well, getting great reviews, the small amount of Merchandise is selling sharply... the DVD sales and rest of the international box office will be the judge, but it seems everything's good so far... unless the other bad kiddy flicks get a bump today through Sunday.