Box Office Opening, Records | featured news

Harry Potter cast a spell over moviegoers worldwide as the sixth entry in the fantasy franchise set a new opening record of $396.7 million, breaking the former global record held by “Spider-Man 3.”

Pic may score best midnight gross of all time -- In a massive start, Warner Bros.’ “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” easily scored the biggest midnight gross of all-time in earning $22.2 million as it unspooled in 3,003 runs at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.

Pic scores best five-day haul after 'Dark Knight' -- Paramount's sequel "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" grossed an estimated $201.2 million from 4,234 theaters at the domestic box office to score the best five-day haul ever after "The Dark Knight."

It's now officially a rock-'em, sock-'em summer! Paramount's Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen shattered the Wednesday opening record set by Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (#5) in 2007 - $60.6M vs $44.2M. Even better for the studio, Transformers 2 came in 2nd only to 2008 box office phenomenon The Dark Knight for biggest opening day ever: $60.6M vs $67.1M. So now 2007 Spider-Man 3's $59.8M single day take drops down to #3. The robot sequel grosses from 4,234 North American theaters are $16M more than Paramount expected. That puts the sci-fi actioner on track for a $175M five-day opening despite overwhelmingly lousy reviews. But Paramount boasted how exit polling showed that 91% of the audience said "they liked this movie as much or better than the first". So this Decepticons vs Autobots battle is reviewer-proof.

Warner Bros./New Line’s redo “Friday the 13th” scared up the best opening ever for a horror movie in grossing an estimated $42.2 million from 3,105 theaters through Sunday.

'Paul Blart' Does Part in Record MLK WeekendLed by an exceptional start for Paul Blart: Mall Cop and solid ones for My Bloody Valentine 3-D, Notorious and Hotel for Dogs, the weekend as a whole was not only a new Martin Luther King, Jr. high but the highest-grossing on record for the month of January.