HARRY POTTER - HARRY FALLS 62 PERCENT

HARRY FALLS 62 PERCENT

The final take for the second weekend of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince turned out to be even less enchanting than the original estimates. Ticket sales were down 62 percent to $29.5 million. While the film enjoyed a terrific midweek kickoff, it has trailed its predecessor, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, on each day since. Some analysts observed that some Harry Potter fans may have been waiting for a wider release of the IMAX version of the movie. (Until now, it has played at only a handful of IMAX sites.) That will come on Wednesday, when Half-Blood Prince takes over 162 big-screen venues that have been showing Transformers 2 . Overseas, it's another story, as the movie raked in $82.5 million in 64 countries, bringing its total to $404 million. The movie that did Harry in was Disney's G-Force , produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, whose magic, unlike Harry's, rarely fails. The movie earned $31.7 million in its debut, helped significantly by premium ticket pricing at 3D theaters. It had been expected to debut with about $20 million. Also opening well above expectations was the critically derided The Ugly Truth, starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler. The movie opened in third place with $27.6 million. A third new film, the horror flick Orphan,- took in just about what analysts expected it would -- $12.9 million. Overall, the box office was down for the third weekend in a row, down 16 percent to $151.4 million against $180.9 million for the comparable weekend a year ago.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Box Office Mojo (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date) 1. G-Force, Disney, $31,706,934, (New); 2. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Warner Bros., $29,462,187, 2 Wks. ($221,295,818); 3. The Ugly Truth, Sony, $27,605,576, (New); 4. Orphan, Warner Bros., $12,871,483, (New); 5. Ice Age Dawn of the Dinosaurs , 20th Century Fox, $8,408,430, 4 Wks. ($171,499,101); 6. Transformers Revenge of the Fallen , Paramount/DreamWorks, $8,124,427, 5 Wks. ($379,214,172); 7. The Hangover , Warner Bros., $6,461,370, 8 Wks. ($247,073,766); 8. The Proposal, Disney, $6,379,926, 6 Wks. ($140,042,989); 9. Public Enemies, Universal, $4,352,650, 4 Wks. ($88,278,880); 10. Brüno, Universal, $2,832,870, 3 Wks. ($56,629,390).

28/07/2009