Los Angeles - The vampires of the newest Twilight saga, New Moon, howled to success this weekend with the third largest opening weekend on record of 141 million dollars.

Only the Batman saga Dark Knight (158 million dollars in 2008) and Spider-Man 3 (151 million dollars in 2007) took bigger bites of a weekend boxoffice.

The vampires pushed the futuristic 2012 off its top perch from last week, and sucked its box office take down to 26.5 million dollars for third place. But the end-of-the world spectacle still has managed to take in a total of 108 million dollars in two weekends, not bad for a doom and gloom flick.

The Blind Side, a football drama with Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw, muscled up to debut in second place with 34.5 million dollars.

Planet 51, an animated alien adventure movie, took in 12.6 million dollars, followed by Jim Carrey's A Christmas Carol (12.2 million dollars); Precious (11 million dollars); The Men Who Stare at Goats (2.8 million dollars); Couples Retreat (1.9 million dollars); The Fourth Kind (1.7 million dollars); and Law Abiding Citizen (1.6 million dollars.) (dpa)