If you are a fan of The Twilight Saga, I don't have to tell you what a big day this is. It's probably been circled by a red heart on your day planners since, um, last November. For box office reporters, however, this is a big day for another reason. The release of New Moon at 12:01 am this morning had the potential to overturn the midnight box office record set by The Dark Knight back in July of 2008.  New Moon already had the record for midnight presales so the only question left to ponder was how high Bella and Edward would go. No official numbers from Summit are yet available but it looks like that $18.4 million record The Dark Knight claimed has indeed fallen.

According to Variety, estimates for the 3,514 North American New Moon theatres put the film's midnight total at $26.3 million.  This means that The Dark Knight opening day record of $67.1 million is in danger of succumbing to Twilight mania. We all knew it would be huge, but huge enough to beat The Dark Knight? That's a horse of another color. A huge horse.  We'll keep you updated as the weekend numbers start to come in.