"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" ruled the box office starting Wednesday and carrying all the way through Sunday. No surprise there, especially when the movie's playing on OVER 9,000 SCREENS. That's the third-widest opening of all time after the most recent "Spider-Man" and "Pirates." Fueling the mania was the buzz around the imminent drop of J.K. Rowling's final novel in the series.
Here are the "Potter" numbers: $44.2 million its opening day, a new record for a Wednesday. $140 million in tickets sold from Wednesday through Sunday, the sixth best five-day start. The weekend grosses were "small" -- $77 million -- but only because the hardcore mouthbreathers had already gone on Wednesday and Thursday. Factor in another $190 million overseas, and "Phoenix" has already hauled in a third of a billion dollars. Wouldn't it be nice if Warner Bros. put some of that to, I dunno, building some new schools or funding alternate energy programs? Oops, I forgot, under Hollywood accounting practices, the movie will never get out of the red.)
The only other new release, crummy horror movie "Captivity," barely showed its face, opening in a scant 1,000 theaters and raking in $1.5 million, doubtless from audiences who were shut out of "Harry Potter" screenings. "Transformers" and "Ratatouille" held their own passably. The excellent Don Cheadle movie "Talk to Me" did nicely in a limited 33-theater rollout, picking up an $11K per-theater-average.
More charts and analysis from Box Office Mojo and Leonard Klady.
