Taylor Lautner's Abduction Debut: Was It Any Worse Than His Twilight Peers' Movies? Today 12:04 PM PDT by JOAL RYAN Bruce Talamon/Lionsgate; Runawa

Taylor Lautner's Abduction Debut: Was It Any Worse Than His Twilight Peers' Movies?

Today 12:04 PM PDT by JOAL RYAN


Bruce Talamon/Lionsgate; Runaway Productions; Summit Entertainment
Taylor Lautner's Abduction opened to terrible reviews, and middling box office.

A disaster? Or same old, same old for a Twilight star starring in a non-Twilight movie?

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Neither, really.

Abduction wasn't a disaster (except maybe in the P.R. department). It's a $35 million movie that's made about $11 million, and will end up in the black, according to its studio.

This is not the same, though, as saying Abduction was a success.

Unlike Robert Pattinson's and Kristen Stewart's first star vehicles outside of the Twilight franchise, Remember Me and The Runaways, respectively, Abduction was a genre film. Lautner got paid a lot of money to make it ($7.5 million), and, in return, it was supposed to make a lot of money. It wasn't necessarily supposed to get beat in the box-office standings by a Harry Connick Jr. movie about sea life.

If anything, Lautner's weekend makes Pattinson look like the Twilight star to beat.

While Remember Me didn't impress at first, it actually made back half its budget in its opening weekend. In the end, it more than tripled the budget. Water for Elephants, likewise, was a legit hit for a drama, grossing nearly $120 million worldwide off a $38 million budget.

Stewart, meanwhile, is still showing the least box-office potential of the Twilight trio. The Runaways was a heavilty promoted flop; Welcome to the Rileys grossed even less. Both, however, were small films. The truest test of her drawing power won't come until next summer's Snow White and the Huntsman.

Lautner can lick his wounds knowing he did at least some of what he was supposed to do this weekend. For one thing, his action film outgunned Jason Statham's Killer Elite. For another thing, Abduction brought in—and wowed—his kind of people: Lionsgate said girls under the age of 18 graded the critically trashed film an A-minus.

"That directly speaks to Taylor and his fan base," studio exec David Spitz said today. "They love him."

Of course, the eternal question of the teen idol is, will they still love him tomorrow?

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