This week saw Vampire Academy open to a wimper grossing 4.1 million in the US. This marks yet another failed attempt by film studios to chase the elusive "Twilight audience".
Beautiful Creatures, The Mortal instruments and even Meyer's other book The Hose all failed to capture even a bit of Twilight's insane popularity despite being roughly the same demographic being marketed to. Why is it these films barely make their production costs (ignoring marketing costs) while Twilight managed to be an absolute juggernaut?
Film Gross World Wide
The Mortal Instruments - 90 million
The Host - 48 million
Beautiful Creatures - 60 million
Cirque du Freak - 39 million
The Seeker - 31 million
Compare thes enumbers to Twilight
Twilight - 392 million
Twilight: New Moon - 709 million
Twilight: Eclipse - 698 million
Twilight: Breaking Dawn 1 - 712 million
Twilight: Breaking Dawn 2 - 829 million
For comparison sake
Twilight (5 films) - 3,340 million
Others (5 films) - 268 million
So, even if you combined all five of these films they combine do not come close to Twilight's weakest performing entry. Why is this? What made this series so special? Was it a perfect storm of timing? Yet, time and again studios are finding no luck capturing it. You may argue Hunger Games or Harry Potter are examples, but I tend to find those have a blance of gender in fans while Twilight and the others list above skew female. I guess we will see if "Divergent" can break through come March, but it is going against the wind right now.
