‘Half-Blood Prince’ Earns $58.4M on the First Day

Published by Jeff Leins on July 16, 2009

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince made $58.4 million on opening day at the box office, the fourth largest single day in history.  This was after claiming the biggest midnight sales numbers with $22 million.

The sixth Potter movie missed third (held by Spider-Man 3) by merely a million and failed to top Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($62 million) and The Dark Knight ($67.2 million).  The British boy wizard placed second in all-time Wednesday openings behind Michael Bay’s robot sequel.

No other Harry Potter film is in the top ten despite eventually grossing $250-300 million a piece domestically.  It’s also the best single day for the lucrative franchise, which is nearing $1.5 billion in the U.S. alone.  Across the globe the series has made just shy of $4.5 billion.  Half-Blood Prince has already crossed the $100 million mark worldwide.

Some box office analysts are predicting as high as $190-200 million for the PG-rated Potter by Sunday, which would put it the top three 5-day openings of all time.  It would need over $203.8 million to top the record held by Batman.  With a PG-rating and a younger-skewing audience, anything could happen.