Jaws are dropping all over Hollywood: 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon,' an inexpensive sequel from a 3-year-old independent studio, sold a supernatural $140.7 million in tickets over the weekend in North American theaters. With strong advance sales, this Summit Entertainment movie, based on the second of Stephenie Meyer's four teenage vampire books, was expected to be an immediate blockbuster. But box office prognosticators had the outcome closer to $100 million. The first movie, 'Twilight,' sold $70 million in its first weekend. The huge No. 1 opening gave 'New Moon' a rarefied perch in the motion picture industry's record books. It ranks as the third-biggest opening on record, behind the pop culture behemoths 'The Dark Knight,' which sold $158.4 million last year, and 'Spider-Man 3,' which sold $151.1 million in 2007. 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' previously held the third spot with $135.6 million. But 'New Moon,' which sold an additional $118.1 million overseas, was significantly cheaper to make. Summit spent about $50 million to produce the movie, while Warner Bros. spent at least $185 million on 'The Dark Knight,' and Sony Pictures spent about $260 million on 'Spider-Man 3.' Walt Disney Studios spent at least $225 million on 'Dead Man's Chest.' Female moviegoers, particularly teenage girls, drove ticket sales, as expected. Summit said the audience was only 20 percent male, an improvement from the first movie; 50 percent of the audience was under the age of 21. 'Over the past couple of years the young female audience has really started driving a lot of the marketplace,' said Richie Fay, Summit's president for domestic distribution. 'When that group decides a movie is worth their time, resistance is futile. It's an inexpensive social evening: kids on date night, girls with groups of their friends, mothers going with their daughters.' With the audience so skewed in one direction, however, 'New Moon' may suffer steeper drops in the coming weeks than other megahits. Now that the hard-core fans have seen it, will broader audiences embrace it? 'We're going to have a drop, sure, but we had good repeat business for 'Twilight' and expect that will also be the case here,' Fay said. The results officially make the 'Twilight' franchise as gigantic a phenomenon at the movies as it has been in the bookstores. The four novels have sold over 70 million copies worldwide. 'The Twilight Saga' is the tale, unabashedly cheesy in spots, of an ordinary high school girl named Bella Swan who falls in love with Edward Cullen, a heartthrob vampire who is too tenderhearted to suck blood. In 'New Moon' Edward, played by Robert Pattinson, leaves town to protect Bella, played by Kristen Stewart. A beefcake werewolf (Taylor Lautner) steps in to fill the void. Summit pounced on the rights to the books after Paramount Pictures passed on making 'Twilight,' missing an intense but still-fledgling online fan base. The third movie, 'Eclipse,' will arrive at the multiplex on June 30. A release date for the fourth installment, 'Breaking Dawn,' is expected in the coming weeks; there is speculation that Summit will split that title into two films. It was difficult for any other movie to gain traction against 'New Moon,' in part because it opened in 4,024 theaters. 'The Blind Side,' an inspirational sports drama starring Sandra Bullock, sold an estimated $34.5 million for second place, a strong result that would have been enough for No.1 in recent weeks. The film was made by Warner Bros. and Alcon Entertainment. Sony's disaster thriller '2012' was third, with an estimated $26.5 million for a new total of $108.2 million, according to Hollywood.com. (Adding foreign ticket sales, which have been especially strong, the movie has sold almost $450 million.) 'Planet 51,' an animated film made by Ilion and distributed by Sony, was fourth with an estimated $12.6 million. The soft showing underscores how difficult it is for computer-animation upstarts to break into a marketplace dominated by Pixar and DreamWorks. Another entry from a new animation studio, 'Astro Boy,' opened to a disastrous $6.7 million last month. 'Disney's A Christmas Carol' chugged along in fifth place with an estimated $12.2 million for a new total of $79.8 million. 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' continued to expand, rolling out to 455 additional theaters. It was sixth with about $11 million ($21.4 million total). 