Harry Potter Box Office Set to Eclipse Dark Knight; Will Record Last Long?

Box office numbers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 are the biggest of all time at the moment. Sometime Monday afternoon, the victory will be made official, as the last Harry Potter movie will supplant The Dark Knight's opening three-day total of $158 million. For now, the take is at $168.5 million for Deathly Hallows Part 2, according to Deadline Hollywood, yet the final total could be a few million more or less. No matter what it is, it will break a record that stood for three years. But will this new record last as long?

When The Dark Knight had its massive opening three days, it looked like its $158.4 million total would stand for a long time. But that was before the Harry Potter series reached its end and higher 3D ticket prices became the norm. Yet there have been massive grand finales before, and several 3D epics before, but none of them hit quite like this.

Deathly Hallows Part 2 had the advantage of a massive fan base that waited years for this event, including an extra eight months after Part 1. In addition, it had rave reviews, and relief that the finale actually lived up to the hype, to get viewers more excited. A perfect storm of events set up this record-breaking weekend, and a perfect storm will be needed for another movie to top it in the future.

Warner Bros. may hope to break the record as soon as next summer. That is when The Dark Knight Rises opens, another highly anticipated conclusion to a mega-hit franchise. With all the hype around that finale -- evidenced by the hunt for the teaser trailer that showed before Deathly Hallows -- it could take the record back for the Batman franchise.

However, its chances will be hurt by a lack of 3D, as Christopher Nolan hasn't jumped on that bandwagon quite yet. Without 3D ticket prices, Rises will have a harder time getting to the $160 million opening range. But it will open in IMAX, which has high ticket prices of its own.

Yet if the next Batman or any movie is to get the opening Deathly Hallows Part 2 had, it needs something extra. For one thing, it actually needs to be good, as both The Dark Knight and Harry Potter finale were two of the most acclaimed summer blockbusters of the last decades. Transformers: Dark of the Moon was a big finale and flooded 3D theaters, but it didn't set records since no one expected greatness from it.

If The Dark Knight Rises actually doesn't ruin the legacy of The Dark Knight and turns out to be another classic, then the Harry Potter kind of box office could be in reach. But it will be another year before those results come in, and it could still be another three years or more until there's an opening like this again.

Sources

Deadline Hollywood- "HARRY POTTER FINALE $475.5M PHENOM!"