Harry Potter Dominate the Box Office
Transformers move aside, the new Harry Potter film, Order of the Phoenix has arrived! As Potter fans young and old rejoice, Warner Brothers celebrated with a smash hit at the box offices with a $77.4 million opening.
Harry Potter charmed the box office with $77.4-million (all figures U.S.) weekend opening for the Warner Bros. fantasy sequel Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, according to studio estimates yesterday.
That raised the movie’s total international gross to over $330 million since it opened in 45 countries last Wednesday.
Order of the Phoenix expanded overall business for Hollywood. The top 12 movies took in $171.1 million, up 14 per cent from the same weekend last year, when Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was No. 1 with $62.3 million.
Transformers, the DreamWorks-Paramount sci-fi tale that was the previous weekend’s No. 1 movie, slipped to second place with $36 million and a total $223 million.
The fifth chapter in the movie series based on J.K. Rowling’s novels about the teen wizard – the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is out Saturday – Order of the Phoenix has Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) leading a secret society of students to prepare for a showdown with the evil Lord Voldemort.
The previous four Harry Potter flicks all had bigger first weekends, ranging from $88.4 million to $102.7 million. Those all debuted Friday. Order of the Phoenix was the first to get a jump on the weekend with a Wednesday opening.
"We’re in the middle of summer, and we just said why not, because kids are out of school," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros.
source Tags: harry potter, order of the phoenix, opening weekend, box office, transformers
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1 opinion for Harry Potter Dominate the Box Office
TheThunderChild
Jul 16, 2007 at 9:15 pm
My local theater is showing it from morning til night, and it’s getting plenty of customers. Frankly….I found it pretty boring. None of the people get a lot of screentime except for Harry - unavoidable considering all the stuff that had to be got through… but I watch the Potter films for Rickman and Jason Isaacs…and they weren’t on screen enough!
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