It hardly comes as a surprise, but the final Harry Potter film has cast a spell over movie-going audiences and already broken its first record. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ set the record for midnight box office last night pulling in a staggering $43.5 million in ticket sales.
The old record was held by “Twilight: Eclipse” which did $30 million from midnight showings last year. To put that $43.5 million figure in perspective, “Kung Fu Panda 2″ — one of the hits of the summer – only sold $47 million worth of tickets its entire first weekend of release. Potter did that much in just its first hour of release.
Analysts saw this one coming several days ago. On Thursday, online ticket sellers reported over 6000 midnight screenings were sold out. “There is a theater near me with 16 screens,” said Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino. “I went on Monday to buy a ticket for the midnight shows and they were all sold out.”
In fact, many theaters, including expensive IMAX theaters, reported so much demand for midnight tickets that they added a series of 3am showings of the film. Talk about your all-night parties!
The question now becomes if “HP 7.2″ set the all-time weekend record. The current record holder is “The Dark Knight,” which pulled in a staggering $158.4 million when it opened in July of 2008.
“It has a shot,” says Contrino. “There are two keys here. First, those die-hards who went to see it at midnight, how many of them will want to see it again on Saturday or Sunday. Secondly, it needs to bring in the casual fans – folks who maybe have not read all the books or seen all the movies. There are signs this is turning into an event where people want to be there to see the end of this epic story. If that happens, we could see ‘Dark Knight’’s record fall.”
Most box office analysts were forecasting an opening around $145-$150 million before the Friday numbers came out, so it is clear that Potter has the potential to threaten “Dark Knight.” If “HP 7.2″ does manage to break ‘The Dark Knight”’s weekend record, it may not be able to celebrate for too long. Next summer, a new film comes along to threaten the mark. That film is “The Dark Knight Rises.”
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