“Twilight,” the film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling vampire romance novel, was one of the biggest movies of last year.

More than 360 days after its release, its sequel, “New Moon,” overshadowed its predecessor and became an absolute phenomenon.

“It gets you hooked, it really does,” said Canada sophomore Chelsi Abbott. “Everyone likes a good love story.”

Abbott saw the movie Saturday with her roommates at one of its many sold-out showings over the weekend at Celebration! Cinemas, 4935 E. Pickard Road.

Abbott said she mostly went to see the movie for the “man candy.”

“I hate the story, but I like the guy,” she said.

Abbott’s roommate, New York sophomore Liesel Toth, said the movie was great, but her favorite part was when Jacob Black, played by Taylor Lautner, first took his shirt off.

“I thought it was fantastic,” Toth said of the movie, but later repeated regarding the scene.

A hit

“New Moon” made $140.7 million for the weekend, more than double the opening weekend of “Twilight,” and the third-biggest opening weekend of all time, behind “The Dark Knight” and “Spider-Man 3.”

It stole several records from “The Dark Knight,” specifically the highest gross for an opening day with $72.7 million and highest gross solely from opening-day midnight screenings with $26.3 million.

The Los Angeles Times reported “New Moon” was made with a budget of $50 million, compared to the $185-million budget of “Dark Knight.”

It also was made for roughly one-fourth of what “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” was — the only other movie of 2009 to have an opening weekend of more than $100 million in box office sales.

Produced independently by Summit Entertainment, “New Moon” is the biggest opening for an independent movie in history. The highest-grossing movie to be independently produced and distributed is “The Passion of the Christ,” which has grossed $611 million worldwide.

Summit is not easing up on its golden-goose franchise yet. “Eclipse,” the third movie in the “Twilight” series, is scheduled to be released June 30 of next year, just seven months after “New Moon.”

Employees at Celebration! Cinemas were unavailable for comment because of the amount of business at the cinema, which manager Amy Hile attributed to hourly showings of “New Moon,” as well as the Sandra Bullock drama, “The Blind Side.”

E-mail the author: Brad Canze