A crowd cheers for the cast of Twilight at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.
One dark, rainy night last spring, a young woman brought an offering to the set of Twilight in rural Oregon. "She gave her infant to a vampire," director Catherine Hardwicke marvels. Actually, the Twilighter--as the mostly female devotees of Stephenie Meyer's vampire romances call themselves--had driven hours to get pictures of her baby with the cast. Even before Twilight hits theaters Nov. 21, the series' readers have exhibited enough excitement--if not hysteria--to persuade the studio, Summit Entertainment, to start a sequel. Twilight is just one of a wave of movies challenging the conventional wisdom that the taste of young men drives the box office. This year female fans helped make monster hits of High School Musical 3 ($84 million), Mamma Mia! ($144 million) and Sex and the City ($152 million). "[Female-centric films] used to be counterprogramming," says Disney's president of distribution Chuck Viane. "Now they've become the gorilla in the marketplace." It's not just the size of a fan base that matters (in the case of Twilight, an audience that made the books best sellers), but the degree of its ardor. In a Fandango survey of early ticket buyers, 85% said they plan to see Twilight more than once. It wouldn't be the first time young women paid to see a movie over and over again--the same demographic helped Titanic become the highest-grossing film of all time.