Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Breaks Midnight Box Office Record
Well it appears that the eight-month delay for the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince didn’t hurt public interest in the franchise; if anything, it may have only increased demand for the sixth installment of the young wizard series. The movie opened on Tuesday night at midnight and apparently set a record for the biggest midnight opening to date. It earned $22.2 million from showings on over 3,003 screens, flying past the midnight numbers for The Dark Knight ($18 million), Star Wars: Episode III ($17 million) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($16 mil).
Now granted, midnight openings are a fairly new occurrence, so to break a record like this doesn’t mean a heck of a lot. However, a lot of people are seeing it as a sign that the movie may be on track to break some other records this weekend. I was just surprised to see that it had a bigger midnight take than the last Harry Potter flick, which seems to indicate that support for the series is growing at a time when I would think a lot of people are starting to lose interest. (Then again, maybe it just means that more of the hardcore fans are now old enough to stay up past midnight… heh.) Do you think Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be the biggest movie of the year? Will it break any of the all-time box office records?
Comments (9)
….hmmmm, well, i don’t know about how many records it will break. It already broke one, so it may well be on it’s way.
Before the summer started we had a poll; what would be the biggest movie of the summer. There were many picks to choose from. The battle was indeed between, star trek, transformers, and hp 6. And If yesterday was any indicator, well i hate to say i told you so….but….I TOLD YOU SO
seriously, personal bias aside, wether your a trekie, or an optimus prime fan, or what have you. None of the movies has such a big, endeering, faithful base as harry potter. Not even star trek can compare to the “cult” following of harry potter. Kids, moms, dads, boys, girls, women, men, families, everyone can be a harry potter fan. There was no contest coming into this summer, and there won’t be coming out. HP 6 in my opinion, will probably be the biggest movie of the year.
that being said I know how big and how well star trek has done and continued to do well at the box office. so right now in my opinion, star trek will be the movie to beat. transformers….not even close.
Posted by rick on July 16th, 2009Once NON-fans and people who haven’t read the books get wind of just how BORING and uneventful this movie is the grosses should go down.
Posted by Bob The Slob on July 16th, 2009Overall, Domestic and Foreign, this Harry Potter will no doubt be the biggest movie of the summer and probably year.
In the US alone though, it will surpass Star Trek (not by much) but not Transformers. The previous HP movies (minus the first one) didn’t get over the 300 million mark overall in the US, and Transformers (which is still grossing) is already at 345 mill. in the US.
Posted by bryan on July 16th, 2009LOL What happenned with all the Potter fanboys on various sites who were threatning to boycott this movie if it got delayed?
Posted by John_Locke on July 16th, 2009Interesting point that Bryan; 4 of the top 10 grossing films of all time are HP in the non-USA bracket, whereas in wholly USA box office terms the highest position for an HP film is 23rd with The Philosopher’s Stone (or Sorcerer’s Stone). Conversely The Dark Knight is 23rd (non-USA) and 2nd (USA). I’m sure that tells us something about the American pshyche – though I don’t know what !
Posted by Paul Andrews on July 17th, 2009I was one of those people who went into the move wanting to hate it after I heard of the changes they made from the book. But I ended up absolutely loving it. The Half-Blood Prince is the best movie of the year so far, some critics are saying it’s got oscar potential and I will agree. I don’t even know anything about filmmaking but even I could appreciate the direction. Yates makes scenes which would be dull interesting through the things he does with the camera, like the scene when Hermione is crying in the hallway, that scene has no right to be as interesting as it is but I don’t know the dim lighting and the way he frames it partially looking outside with snow falling was quite remarkable. Also the big swooping shots like the one in the beginning with the Death Eaters wreaking havoc in the muggle world and the one in the castle which starts from looking at Harry and Hermione consoling each other in the east window, swoops through Lavender and Ron making out to Draco having a moment of conflict were awesome. Someone Jay who knows about film making could probably talk about it more articulately but it was so well done that even people like me and even someone like Reed Farrington can appreciate the cinematography and the direction.
The special effects don’t even feel like special effects. The only time I thought to myself “Oh this is CGI” was when the inferi come out of the water other then that the effects blend in seamlessly. They don’t beat you over the head with the cgi. Unlike in tranformers where everytime there is a robot Bay figuratively instructs all the geeks to flap out their dicks and start beating off to it.
Half-Blood Prince deserves each and every penny it’s making and I’m rooting for it because I don’t want that piece of Garbage that is Transformers 2 to be the highest grossing film of the year
Posted by GORT on July 17th, 2009“so right now in my opinion, star trek will be the movie to beat. transformers….not even close.”
your opinino doesnt matter vs. the numbers. (Domestically at the moment) Transformers is currently at around 340 million, Star Trek is at 250 million. The top grossing Potter movie is the fist one (320), the last one did 290. It has the potential to be big, and based on the other movies’ track record it will probably pass Star Trek. but I don’t believe its going to surpass TF2.
I think like the Mamo podcast predicted, its initial box office will be massive though, simply BECAUSE of the delay making people hungrier and more anticipatory.
Posted by Goon on July 17th, 2009whoops, someone got to the numbers before me
but yeah, domestic it wont beat TF2, foreign – maybe. Other than Japan I don’t know about Transformers’ worldwide reach.
Posted by Goon on July 17th, 2009I think it has a chance of beating transformers. The word of mouth is much stronger. It would suck if T2:RoTF is the top grossing movie of the year.
Posted by GORT on July 17th, 2009Leave a Reply