Summit Entertainment has officially come out of hiding.

This past weekend saw the fourth-highest grossing film ever for the month of November—but this time it wasn't a young wizard who conjured up the cash, as in the top three films, but rather a tortured teenage vampire. Summit's Twilight, which opened at 12:01 a.m. Friday in the space left by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince's move to a July 2009 date, shattered the studio's expectations by bringing in $70.6 million.

Though most media analysts expected Twilight to be a hit, given its rabid fan base and lucrative sales of the four-book saga on which it's based—25 million books and counting—Summit played it safe, continuously projecting only $30 million in opening-weekend ticket sales. Both Tina Wells, C.E.O. of Buzz Marketing Group in New Jersey, and Robert Bucksbaum, president of Exhibitor Relations in Los Angeles, spoke to Portfolio.com Friday about the movie's potential, estimating an opening-weekend intake of $55 million to $60 million.

Twilight, the story of high school junior Bella who falls deeply in love with her immortal lab partner Edward Cullen, brought movie theatres the biggest vampire debut on record, beating out most noticeably Anne Rice's Interview With a Vampire in 1995. Additionally, it made Catherine Hardwicke the highest-grossing female director for a single weekend.

Summit is an independent studio that has seen little in the way of box-office success, and was reluctant to set the bar too high for Twilight's debut. But the movie turned over a new leaf for the studio, whose vampire romance out-grossed its last five films combined in its first weekend alone. They are already at work on the film’s sequel, 2010's New Moon, which sees Bella grow closer to Jacob Black, another teen with a mythical background.

And while the series' target demographic—love-struck teen girls who wouldn't mind a day in the life of Bella Swan—certainly came through for Summit, Twilight was able to reach beyond the grade-school walls: According to the studio, 45 percent of all weekend attendees were over the age of 25.

"This certainly exceeded our expectations by a great deal," said Summit's president of domestic distribution, Richie Fay. "The fan base was huge."

One person (or vampire, as the case may be) who didn't underestimate the loyalty of Twilight's fans? 26-year-old Cam Gigandet, who plays the movie's villain James and last week told MTV he expected the film to bring in $80 million, more than twice what the studio projected.