Shortly after midnight tonight, the same movie will be playing in all 14 auditoriums at the brand-new Cinemark University Mall in Orem. And every available ticket has been purchased. Such is the allure of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan -- the biggest names in teenage passion since Romeo and Juliet -- and the scarcely containable anticipation of "Twilight."

Brigham Young University student Melanie Kowallis is planning to see "Twilight" twice just in its first 24 hours of theatrical release. Kowallis, 25, and several friends are going to Salt Lake County tonight for a midnight show, and she's seeing it again Friday evening with her mother, Julee, at the Megaplex 8 at Thanksgiving Point.

Based on the young-adult novel by BYU graduate Stephenie Meyer that shares its title, "Twilight" is the movie event of the year, possibly of the decade. Armies of teenage girls know the story of brainy Bella, who moves to rain-drenched Forks, Wash., to live with her father and finds herself strangely drawn to odd, unnaturally handsome Edward, who has nice manners and a dark secret -- he hasn't aged a day in nearly a century because he's not human. He's the ultimate predator: a super-strong, impossibly fast vampire.

It's not just girls and young women, however, who have read "Twilight" and its three sequels. Kowallis didn't even know about the books until she spied the first one propped open facedown in her mother's bedroom.

"My mom doesn't read dark books," Kowallis said. "I read the back and I was like, 'What?' It was so bizarre that my mom was reading this book. I picked it up and started reading it and that was it."

The story is the same all over. BYU freshman Kristin Larsen, 19, had never seen the books before this summer. Now she's read all four of them -- multiple times. The first one is Larsen's favorite, so her hopes for the movie are high. "I'm really excited," she said. "If I absolutely love it, I will definitely go see it again."

Nobody was expecting it to be as big as it is. The release in theaters of "Twilight," directed by Catherine Hardwicke and starring Robert Pattinson (as Edward) and Kristen Stewart (as Bella), has been a brewing phenomenon for months, but the film industry has especially paid attention since August, when Warner Bros. decided to delay its long-planned Nov. 21 release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Upstart distributor Summit Entertainment yanked "Twilight" out of a scheduled Dec. 12 opening and moved it to Nov. 21 -- the Friday before Thanksgiving and a coveted film release date -- while the "Harry Potter" switcheroo was still breaking news.

Even Summit's unmistakable confidence, however, didn't convince everyone that "Twilight" was an "event" movie. "We had heard things, but nobody was expecting it to be as big as it is," said Tory Lemon, a PR rep for Red Carpet Cinemas, which owns the Spanish 8 Theatre in Spanish Fork.

Meyer herself hadn't known exactly what to expect before seeing the movie at a private showing earlier this fall and reporting her thoughts to Entertainment Weekly magazine. "I had my paper and my pen because it was a rough cut and I wanted to give feedback on things I felt needed to be changed. And I didn't write a single thing down because I was so involved," she said. "I would have watched it all night in a loop if I could have."

It's a funny choice of words, actually. Exhibitors, or theater owners, typically get a jump on first-day ticket sales of hotly anticipated movies by booking a handful of screenings immediately after midnight of the day before opening. The Spanish 8 and two other Red Carpet theaters in Utah, however, aren't going to stop there.

As part of a promotion that the chain is calling "All Night Twilight," Red Carpet will screen the movie non-stop from midnight Thursday until midnight Friday. (Hey, procrastinators! Bet there's still tickets to see it at 2:15 or 4:30 a.m.)

Lemon, who's 29 and got into Meyer's novels at the urging of a niece, saw the movie last week, before even film critics got to have a look. She thinks that Pattinson, a relative unknown before being cast as Edward, is about to have a lot of new fans. Moviegoers, Lemon said, "will definitely be happy with him. I was very impressed."