If you happened to live in any sort of metropolitan city that has anything resembling a megaplex movie theatre, chances are you saw a phenomenon last night that’s usually relegated to Star Wars fanatics and Harry Potter lovers: Day-long lineups for a midnight screening. The movie in subject is, of course, the ubiquitous Twilight.

Twilight, for those not under 15, over 35, or male, is a literary quadrilogy about the heartwarming saga of a clingy, vapid, obsessive teenage girl and her possessive, over-protective, domineering vampire boyfriend. It’s a love story for the ages, really. But somehow, something in there clicked with the minds, hearts and wallets of millions of readers out there (mostly, as aformentioned, the under-15-over-35-not-male crowd), and the entertainment business, savvy beast that it is, capitalized almost immediately by making a movie adaptation — one that’s currently sitting at a 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics can be so cruel.

The entertainment business, however, is also smart in the way of oddsmaking — Twilight opening box office odds are -115 for both over and under $52 million, and there’s also picks for how many weeks it’ll be at number one in the domestic box office. Your best odds there are to bet on two weeks — it’s a reasonable amount of time for a (*cough*) masterpiece such as Twilight to stay at #1, and at +200, there’s some good value in that pick. Will it be the new Titanic, with months and months at the top? Probably not, but at least you can try to rake in James Cameron-level dough.

Hang on, wait a sec — what about that boy wizard I mentioned earlier? My girl Summer’s got that covered for ya with her Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince betting odds. She makes a pretty good argument for HP’s three-day opening to be bigger than Iron Man, taking into account the plunging American economy as well. But hey, if we can’t lose ourselves in one young wizard’s epic bildungsroman of a movie series, then what, really, can we find escape in? Look for all the unabated and unimpressed non-Twi-hards to keep their cash for their beloved Harry and friends, and the rest of us to use our dollars to bet exotics online.

(By the way, Angel >>> Edward. No question!)