Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban arrives in U.S. theaters today, after doing boffo biz in Europe this week:

The new Harry Potter film has broken a record set by its predecessor, The Chamber of Secrets, by taking £11.5m in three days at the UK box office.

The Chamber of Secrets took £10.8m in its opening weekend in 2002 but was beaten by The Prisoner Of Azkaban, which opened in the UK on Monday.

The third film based on Harry Potter books, it opens in the US on Friday.

According to website Screen Daily, the Prisoner of Azkaban made £5.03m on the first day of its UK release.

And it is estimated to have taken £14.3m in its first four days of release.

....The movie drew an estimated 510,000 admissions nationwide on its French opening day, said film giant Warner Bros.

This compares with 237,146 French preview admissions and 397,174 first-day admissions for Chamber Of Secrets in 2002. [BBC]

All aboard for the train to Hogwarts. Hollywood has cleared the tracks of major film debuts on Friday to make way for the latest "Harry Potter" film and put it on an express route to a No. 1 finish at box offices.

....It follows two straight weeks of box office records for animated "Shrek 2" and disaster flick "The Day After Tomorrow," but film industry experts expect little fatigue from movie fans as this new "Potter" has received solid reviews.

"'Harry Potter' is a brand name and one of most successful (film) franchises of all time," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Los Angeles box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Inc. "People are really buzzing about this one."

....In its debut weekend in Nov. 2001, the first "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" earned $90.3 million. "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" took in about $88.4 million its first weekend a year later, according to Exhibitor Relations.

Dergarabedian reckons a hurdle for "Prisoner of Azkaban" to overcome is the shift to summer where competition is tight, but he believes the new "Potter" will beat last year's $62 million debut for "The Hulk," which is the record for a June opening.

page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4