Harry Potter
 

I thought it would be interested to see what everyone though HP would make in its first weekend...

My pick: $75 million

$76-million + for the first three days. It's opening on upwards of 4,000 screens. Kee-ray-zee.

I'm gonna guess $88-million.

Our local paper had this sick front page picture of people waiting in line to buy advance tickets for Harry Potter, yesterday. C'mon. I'd rather wait...it's not gonna be THAT great.:rolleyes:

sades,

The local news showed people buying ticket two weeks ago at the theaters for Harry Potter... it's like a cult. I think I saw TWT standing in line with his Harry t-shirt and cape and wand... heh

Hah! That wouldn't surprise me! I don't know, I saw the previews and it looks like it'll be a fun movie, but I gotta say, for who the intended audiance is, it looked a little frightening. Didn't it?

Nice avatar by the way...why the little dog?LOL.:laugh:

Even though I've never read any of the books and don't really have any interest to, I feel compelled to go and see the movie. Advertising does work, I guess.

Moviefone.com isn't selling tickets to Harry Potter at the local theater here for some reason. It doesn't say that it's sold out (which it might be), but maybe there's just too much demand.

Oh yeah... my avatar is my dog, JJ. I miss him like anything since I've been at school, but I get to see him when I go home for Thansgiving.

I see no way this movie couldn't make under 75 in its opening weekend. I mean Monsters, Inc., made how much in its opening weekend??? I think it's very possible this movie could blow Monsters out of the water.

Aw, how sweet, He looks like a perfectly adorable little pup.

I ain't voting: I think it'll be over $76 million...and there's no option for that. :) If you want, I can add another option (your call, not mine, Jason-dude). Anyway, my prediction: $80-82 million. New single-day record (probably Friday, but maybe Saturday), and a new 3-day record (topping the old one, JP2, by nearly $10 million). It'll finish with a bit north of $300 million domestically. :)

The first option in the poll is pretty funny, considering it's incredibly likely to make over $25 million by the end of today. :D

TWT-

The last option is for $76 million up into the end of money.

So, you can vote for that one :D

But some of that will be offset by the fact that the movie is so long, so the total number of showings per day is not as large as if say Monsters, Inc. was playing on the same number of screens.

But it shouldn't have any problem doing very well.

Now if only Warners would spend a little time, effort and money into putting out something worth watching, we'd all be set.

Hmmm, some of these number don't sound right. Here's what I know to be true, because I've heard it all over the place: it opens in over 3,600 theatres in the US, which is over half of all theatres domestically. On many larger threatres, it has two screens dedicated to it.

At the place I saw it today, it was playing FOURTEEN times today...despite it's lengthy running time. I'd say the running time semi-offsets it, but not completely. I'd say the fact that there are a bunch of great trailers in front of it would help as well. Anyway, it'll top $80 million thanks to most of these things ("Monsters, Inc." surely benefited from it's SW trailer...which was probably half the length, or less, of the one attached to Potter...and Potter has several other good ones, too).

The theater I saw it in today was running it on six screens (of their twenty-four total). That adds up to twenty-four showings per day, one every forty minutes. That's a lot of damn tickets, and that's just one of my area movie theater complexes. Three of the other big cineplexes (with fourteen, seventeen and sixteen total screens each) had Harry on four, five, and five screens respectively. And those are just four of the big boys in the Baltimore area, just about every theater has it playing on at least one or two of their screens.

Lots and lots o' money coming. Lots. I'll stand by my $88-million guesstimate.

The numbers aren't official yet, but Harry Potter may or may not have broken the single day record set by Phantom Menace in 1999. The estimates are between $25 million and $30 million.

Star Wars' first day take was $28.5 million (and was on a Wednesday instead of a Friday).

Frankly, this whole business turns me way, way off. I mean....the HP books aren't what I'd call "good" children's fiction by any definition of the word.

Are they fun? Yeah.
Are they easy to read? Yeah.
Do they get kids turning off their TVs and picking up books? Yeah.

But doesn't making a movie of a book sort of kill the whole "improve literacy in children" ethos?

I think it just proves that the author / rights-controlling entity is just in it for the money like everyone else.....milking the cash cow for all it's worth.

Maybe I'm just spoiled from being brought up on CS Lewis and Roald Dahl. HMMMPFF.

I don't think so...and making money doesn't have to conflict with the magic of the books at all. If anything, I'd wager that the creation of the movies is going to get kids even more into the 3 books we still have coming.

Oh, and while it's just my opinion, I really do believe that C.S. Lewis would've loved to see Narnia come alive on film with today's technology. I think Harry Potter is *EXCELLENT* children's fiction (although I hesitate to call it that, because I'm 17, and I love the books)...it's been so long since I can recall actually giving a damn about what happens to the characters.

I'm convinced, the woman(her name escapes me right now) who wrote the HP series, new form the start her books would be made into movies. I'm willing to bet with the release of the first book, she had movie offers in the works. That merchandise came out so fast...I've never seen anything like it before.

I was spoiled on CS Lewis, J.R. Tolken, and Roald Dahl too. You think those guys were turning down book rights? You bet. Roald Dahl has scores of books, and there's only like 3 or 4 movies based on his works. I don't know, it just seemed so well thought out. The books, the toys, the movie...a commercial dream.

LeesMovieInfo.com is reporting a $29.4 million gross for Potter on Friday alone. I'm amazed that the votes for $76 and under actually got that many votes! At this point, it'd have to suffer a fairly severe Friday to Sunday dropoff to finish with anything short of $80 million.

If the report is correct, Potter now holds the record for the largest single-day gross, and has an OUTSIDE shot at a three-figure sum. For that to happen, though, the movie would need to do EVEN BETTER today...which may or may not happen. The hype is still present, and it IS a weekend now, but then again, I saw several schoolbuses near the theater around 12:30 yesterday, so I think some people saw it despite the hurdle of school.

I think I'll take in very little less or more than it did on Friday, and then drop a few million on Sunday, leaving it with around $80-82 million, like I thought earlier...but hey, I could be wrong. It could keep this pace up all wekend and top $90, or even $100, if Saturday completely explodes (though I doubt it).

When I saw K-PAX last night, there was like this HUGE line for Harry Potter...so we walked right by, and this woman gets in my face, with these wild eyes and says," The line is back there!" I was like," Not everyone is here to see frippin' Harry Potter lady!" I couldn't believe it. She probably would fight me over it. People were like dressed up too...kids had their Harry Potter costumes on from Halloween. Even the parents had on caps and hats and s***. Totally Potter-Mania!

Just goes to show that studios don't even have to make a good movie in order to break box office records (the Harry Potter movie may well be good. I don't know. But there's no way for all these people who trudged out to see it on Day One to know, either). People are fanatical about a movie they couldn't possibly know is good or bad. That's really kind of amazing. I don't think I'm going to get that kind of loyalty from people who've never seen my movie for any of my films.