Harry Potter: and that Half-Blood Prince made a whopping $22.2 million in its midnight showings.
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?
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