Harry Potter wins at the box office

Harry Potter

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 surprised absolutely no-one this weekend by opening at number one at the US box office.

What might be surprising, though, is that the film broke all previous Harry Potter film records by having the biggest opening for an HP movie yet.

Taking a colossal $125m in its opening weekend, Deathly Hallows easily trumped Goblet Of Fire ’s $102m, and completely eclipsed previous instalment Half-Blood Prince ’s piffling $77.8m.

It also tumbled last week’s number one, Megamind , from the top spot, the CG toon settling for second place ($16m), while runaway train film Unstoppable went for third ($13m).

Due Date’ s third week of release saw it slip to fourth place ($9m) and Russell Crowe’s muscular new opener The Next Three Days took $6.7m and fifth.

Morning Glory woke up to sixth place ($5.4m), Skyline ’s fortunes continued to plummet in seventh ($3.4m), Red enjoyed a sixth week in the top ten in eighth ($2.4m) and For Coloured Girls slipped to ninth ($2.4m).

Finally, Naomi Watts/Sean Penn political drama Fair Game surged from 15th to tenth in its third week of release ($1.4m), no doubt bolstered by favourable reviews.

Next week, Tangled will challenge Harry Potter . Who’ll be victorious?

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.