It was a magical farewell weekend to our favorite wizard and his friends (& enemies) as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 kicked Lord Voldemort to the curb to debut at #1 and break records from the muggle world all the way to Hogwarts. Relative new comedies, #2 Horrible Bosses and #3 Zookeeper, laughed to the bank with $17.777 million and $12.33 million, respectively. Meanwhile, #5 Cars 2 broke away from #7 Bad Teacher to drive in $8.407 million in its fourth weekend.
No surprise to forecasters, studio heads and fans, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 struck box office gold at $481.489 million worldwide, including a two days early limited release internationally in 12 countries. Domestically, the eighth and final movie of the series broke the top grossing weekend record with $169.189 million at a whopping ~11,000 screens, a record that Warner Bros’ The Dark Knight ($158.411 million) held for three years. The second and third records the movie broke was with sold-out midnight screenings at $43.5 million and opening day at $92.1 million. If Part 2 is able to fend off the rest of the summer movies like Captain America: The First Avenger and Cowboys & Aliens, the series could eclipse the $2.217 billion of Star Wars (includes seven originals and seven re-releases) as the most successful movie franchise since Harry Potter‘s eight movies has currently reached $2.177 billion. Not all is rosy though; the 3D rookie garnered a mere 43% of its profits with the trendy trend, showing the power of the classic 2D. The IMAX release was a more favorable choice and led the movie to another record breaker, top grossing IMAX weekend.
The Autobots and Decepticons fell from Cybertron to Earth as Transformers: Dark of the Moon fell to #2 after ruling the summer box office for two weekends straight including the coveted July 4th spot. Although Harry & Co. was going to be the obvious winner of the weekend, Dark of the Moon grossed $21.328 million, a 54.7% decline. But don’t cry for Michael Bay since the third Transformers is the first movie of 2011 to surpass the $300 million mark domestically with $302.878 million. Currently at $762.318 million worldwide, it has the potential to reach Revenge of the Fallen‘s $836.297 million but we’ll have to see after 13 more weekends.
Super 8 skipped over lucky #8 to land two spots down on #9 in its sixth weekend at the box office with just $1.97 million. The film lost both the most in gross at -59.3% and theater count at -833 in the top ten but faired much better than more recent movies #12 Mr. Popper’s Penguins (-56.6%, -994), #13 Green Lantern (-56.8%, -1042) and #14 Monte Carlo (-65.3%, -1304). The sci-fi genre Super 8, starring Kyle Chandler and Elle Fanning, is now at a worldwide gross of $173.242 million, not bad for a $50 million flick.
Check out ‘What To Watch – Theater Edition’ this Friday for this week’s new movie releases…will this Captain get us psyched for Joss Whedon’s Avengers next summer? Iron Man and Thor have.
Feed me at sharon@horrorhaven.com
