The FINANCIAL -- 'New Moon' is heading for $90-million-plus launch, Edward and Bella's latest bite at the box office looks like it will be the second biggest of 2009. " New Moon,” may bring in $600 million worldwide.

“The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” based on the second of Stephenie Meyer’s four best-selling novels, may bring in $600 million worldwide, said David Davis, founder of Arpeggio Partners LLC, a consulting firm to movie studios and film investors based in Santa Monica, California, Bloomberg informs.

The first "Twilight" movie opened to $69.6 million on the same weekend last year. Interest in the series has only grown, however, driven in part by its DVD, the top seller so far this year. Audience surveys have shown that interest among adult women has grown, while teenage and tween girls remain as fanatical as ever, according to Los Angeles Times. Vampires in general are hot. Witness the success of HBO's "True Blood" and the CW's "The Vampire Diaries."

Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com's box-office division, estimated New Moon will open with over $100 million ticket sales in North America this weekend, The Wall Street Journal wrote. The North American benchmark so far is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which made $109 million in its opening weekend earlier this year.

"I don't know if New Moon can beat [Transformers] as it is a huge number, but reaching over $100 million is still a big deal," he said, according to the same source. "This is a direct reflection of the fervor and the excitement surrounding this movie."Both "Twilight" and "New Moon" are Summit Entertainment releases.

Summit Entertainment spent just under $50 million, including Canadian tax credits, to produce the film, Los Angeles Times wrote. Even including marketing costs, "New Moon" is all but certain to be a financial success from theatrical receipts alone, even before revenue from DVD and other ancillary markets.

As with the first "Twilight" movie, early showings are expected to be particularly lucrative, given huge anticipation for the picture among young female fans of the book and first movie who probably can't stay up past their bedtime, Los Angeles Times informs. Online ticket sellers Fandango and MovieTickets.com both report that "New Moon" is the No. 1 advance ticket seller of all time, a reflection not only of overall interest, but of the intense desire of many fans to see the picture on its opening weekend.

In the U.K., the country's largest cinema chain, Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group, said the film had taken in more than $2.5 million by late Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal. "These vampires make sex dangerous again in a highly permissive society," says Sara Lodge, a lecturer in Victorian literature at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. "This is a message that will resonate in the teenage audiences – the film would perhaps help them through the difficult negotiation between delight and disgust."

The films have met with mixed marks -- not that that will deter fans. The first "Twilight" film has a 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning just under half of the 193 critics it tracked gave it a positive review, the same source reported. So far, the sequel has gotten even lower marks -- 39% -- out of 44 reviews counted.

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