The teen girls may be a shoo-in, but Bryan Gliserman predicts that the follow-up to Twilight will do more to draw males than the female-focused original.

New Moon, which arrives Friday through E1 Entertainment, "has broadened its scope beyond the predominantly female audience, and now appeals to audiences both male and female, young and old," says the E1 co-president, noting that U.S. tracking results show the film will draw large numbers of teen males. The decidedly darker sequel sees its heroine (Kristen Stewart) fall into a love triangle with her vampire beau (Robert Pattinson) and a werewolf (Taylor Lautner).

The film is already breaking records. Advance ticket sales topped $1.5 million by Tuesday -- a new Canuck record, according to Cineplex -- and the picture will bow here on a colossal 685 screens, which Gliserman believes is also a record.

The film opens on a reported 4,000 screens via Summit Entertainment in the U.S., where it is also breaking records for advance ticket sales, outpacing blockbusters such as Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and The Dark Knight. It opens day-and-date in Britain through E1 U.K. (formerly Contender Films).

Gliserman says while the film captures a lot of attention on its own, E1 still invested in a "healthy" advertising campaign to position New Moon as the event picture of the year.

He tells Playback Daily that expectations are higher for New Moon than Twilight, released around the same time last year with a Canuck box office total of $20 million.

The busy weekend's other wide releases include Alliance Films' animated feature Planet 51, on 250 screens in Canada, while the Sandra Bullock-starrer The Blind Side, bows on 3,100 screens in North America through Warner Bros.

Also in theaters on Friday:

• Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire rolls out via Maple Pictures after a rewarding turn on the festival circuit that saw the Harlem-set drama pick up top audience awards at TIFF and Sundance, leading to some early Oscar buzz. It opens in Toronto on two screens, followed by all urban markets including Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg next week.

• The Nicolas Cage-starrer Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans bows on one screen each in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver through VVS Films. The film, about a rogue homicide detective in post-Katrina New Orleans, also stars Eva Mendes and Val Kilmer.

• KinoSmith Films has the documentary Collapse, about radical thinker Michael Ruppert and his apocalyptic vision of the future, playing in Vancouver and Calgary, followed by Toronto in December.

• The claymation feature Mary and Max -- which opened this year's Sundance festival and took the grand prize at last month's OIAF -- bows at Toronto's Bloor Cinema via Mongrel Media. It tells the story of two pen pals whose relationship spans two decades and two continents.