Record Breaking Midnight Screenings of 'Harry Potter 7 Pt. 2'!

Warner Bros. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 posts record-breaking North American midnight grosses with an incredible $43.5 million from shows (in 3,800 locs) starting at 12:01am on Friday and running throughout the pre-dawn hours. Sell outs were the norm as excited fans lined up all over the country to see this final installment of the most successful movie franchise ever.

This beats the previous midnight record set by 2010’s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse which earned around $30 million for its midnight screenings on Wednesday June 30, 2010 and easily surpasses the midnight gross for Deathly Hallows, Part 1 back on Friday November 19, 2010.

This sets the stage for a massive and potentially record-breaking single-day gross for the film on Friday (which will include these midnight revenues) that could hit $80 million and take the all-time single-day crown worn by The Twilight Saga: New Moon which earned $72.7 million in its debut on Friday, November 20, 2009 after posting the then second best midnight gross of $26,270,000.

Pre-release projections for the total weekend take for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 have varied from $125 million to well over $150 million and beyond and given this amazing midnight performance the film has a real shot at posting the biggest opening weekend of all-time if it beats The Dark Knight’s $158.4 million debut back in mid-July 2008. We will not know the final outcome until Sunday morning’s box-office weekend estimates, but there is no question that this is already one of the most monumental movie events of this or any year.

(SOURCE: HOLLYWOOD.COM)

The Endless Harry Potter

Elizabeth Minkel, of the New Yorker Books Department, has written an great essay about the Harry Potter books. Here's an except below:

If you missed the piece I wrote on class in the series last fall, when I swallowed my pride and came out as a Harry Potter fan, I’ll say it here once more (and hopefully never again): I love these books. It’s a safe bet that I always will, when I force them on my children at some inappropriately young age, or my grandchildren, who will have them zapped directly into their brains. I love the movies as extensions of the books, even the less-than-stellar ones, but I haven’t been looking forward to the final film; I’m not ready for the end of all things.

You can read the entire essay at this link: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/07/harry-potter-deathly-hallows-it-all-ends.html#ixzz1SJGkmaA4.

Thanks so much to our Hogwarts mate Sylvia for the heads up on this essay.

(SOURCE: THE NEW YORKER)

Pottermore Launches Official Blog: The Pottermore Insider

Announced this morning on the Pottermore Twitter account, the Pottermore Insider is a new blog being maintained by members of the website's team in order to bring fans the latest news and updates and answer questions.

The first blog post features a photo of the Pottermore sign being unwrapped ahead of J.K. Rowling's announcement last month. The Pottermore Insider will be updated regularly before the site launches into beta mode on July 31. If you haven't already done so, don't forget to register your e-mail at Pottermore.com for a chance to be included in the beta launch!

Excerpt from blog:

Written by members of the Pottermore team, the Insider is here to bring you the latest news and updates on all things Pottermore, and to answer any questions you may have.

We’ll be here with you as we get ready for 31 July, and we’ll be posting fairly regularly, so remember to check back every now and then, or add us to your RSS feed so you don’t miss out on anything.

(SOURCE: THE LEAKY CAULDRON)

Deathly Hallows Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes!

The Rotten Tomatoes website, which keeps track of reviews for movies, is reporting that with 150 reviews counted so far, that Deathly Hallows is Fresh! Deathly Hallows has 145 Fresh reviews and 5 Rotten reviews giving the film a freshness rating of 97%. Rotten Tomatoes is predicting that Deathly Hallows may become the best reviewed film of series.

(SOURCE: ROTTEN TOMATOES)

Can Sarah Palin Beat Harry Potter?

Sure, Sarah Palin believes she can beat President Barack Obama in 2012, but the could-be candidate has a more pressing opponent: Harry Potter.

This weekend, the Palin-endorsed documentary The Undefeated squares off at theaters against Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

Does it stand a chance? Does she? Can she really beat him—you know, the wizard kid?

For starters, barring a Voldemort spell, no one and no film is going to deny the last Potter film a final No. 1 opening.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, bowing on more than 4,000 screens, many of them 3-D, has already scored a $43.6 million overseas debut and raked in a reported $32 million here from advance-ticket sales.

Box Office Mojo's Brandon Gray told us the film's easily looking at a $130 million Friday-Sunday domestically, and maybe a Dark Knight-besting take in the neighborhood of $160 million.

As for The Undefeated—it's opening on 10 screens in cities such as Kennesaw, Ga., and Grapevine, Texas. But don't take that stat to mean Potter's going to rout Palin.

If The Undefeated can get off to a start like Bowling for Columbine, to name a Michael Moore documentary that's presumably nothing like Palin's, the movie would rival, and possibly surpass Deathly Hallows Part 2 for per-screen-average bragging rights. (Last fall's Deathly Hallows Part 1 averaged about $30,000 at each of its opening-weekend theaters.)

Still, that's a big if.

As of Wednesday, the documentary's distributor had no word on advance sell-outs, if any. "Our people are reporting back that there's good momentum," Trevor Drinkwater, CEO of ARC Entertainment, said."…But we're trying to keep our expectations [in check]."

Gray said he thought The Undefeated would perform better than most documentaries, but not better than Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

"Palin is so plentiful in the media as it is," Gray said. "It's not like [the film's] an answer to whether she's running for President or not."

Here's a look, meanwhile, at some of the biggest opening-weekend per-screen-average debuts from recent months, per Box Office Mojo stats:

1. Midnight in Paris, $99,834 (six screens)
2. The Tree of Life, $93,230 (four screens)
3. The King's Speech, $88,863 (four screens)
4. Black Swan, $80,212 (18 screens)   

(SOURCE: E ONLINE)

Box Office Report: Midnight Shows of 'Harry Potter' Already at $25 Million in North America

Opening at 12:01 a.m. Friday in 3,800 theaters across the U.S. and Canada, the franchise finale has already earned a record-breaking $43.6 million overseas.

 Theaters have already reported $25 million in ticket sales for midnight runs of Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and it’s not even noon yet on the West Coast.

That puts the movie safely on course to become the top midnight grosser of all time, surpassing the $30 million earned by The Twilight Saga: Eclipse in midnight runs.

All told, Deathly Hallows 2 will be playing in 3,800 theaters when opening at 12:01 a.m. Friday in North America. The $25 million was reported by only a fraction, or 1,400 theaters.

There’s growing consensus that Deathly Hallows 2 has a strong shot at scoring the top weekend opening of all time at the domestic box office, besting the $158.4 million nabbed by another Warner Bros. pic, The Dark Knight.

Overseas, the final title in history’s most lucrative film franchise is already smashing records, grossing an unprecedented $43.6 million on Wednesday as it rolled out in 26 markets, including France, Australia, Italy and Russia.

(SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER)