Megan Fox helped 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen' lead the pack of films that broke the US Summer Box Office record

Though the figures aren’t final, the record for the highest Box Office summer in US history has now been broken.

The record was last broken in 2007 with $4.16 billion, but now 2009 has surpassed that figure with $4.17 billion.  It is expected that the final official figure will be around $4.18M.

Genre films were the clear bread winners. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen led the way with $399.4M.  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came in second with $294.3M.  Star Trek ran fifth with $256.7M, X-Men Origins: Wolverine ran seventh with $179M, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’s $132.M is expected to pass Angels and Demons ($133.4M) to sneak into the top list once the final figures are in.

Source: Variety

Though Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is no longer the big player in box office news, its weekend haul was enough to alter the history books significantly.

The Michael Bay robo-splosion fest pulled $8M over the weekend in the US to reach $379.1M in domestic earnings, surpassing Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to become the tenth highest grossing picture of all time.

By the end of this week it will also have surpassed Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith which sits at ninth place with $380.3M.

Impressive yes, but it should be noted that after adjustment for inflation Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen wouldn’t yet be in the Top 80.

For the record, the big player in the box office is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although not in the US.  Half-Blood Prince is the no.1 film on the international circuit (raking in an estimated $84.4M) however in the US G-Force has surprised everyone by taking the no.1 spot away from Half-Blood Prince in only Potter’s second week of showing.

The tally goes G-Force $32 .2M versus Half-Blood Prince $30M.  Not a bad achievement from a bunch of CGI Guinea Pigs.

Source: Box Office Mojo

A scene from the 3D opening of 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: An Imax 3D Experience has set a new Imax record after pulling in $3.6M from Wednesday through to Sunday internationally.

The record haul occurred across 62 international Imax theaters, equating to $58,000 per screen every day for the five day timeframe, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The news follows a series of record breaking box office hauls by the film.  Read about those here.

“Warner Bros. is thrilled with the opening weekend numbers and setting a new Imax international record,” said Veronika Kwan-Rubinek, president of Warner Bros. Pictures International. “These results are a testament to the long and flourishing partnership we have had with Imax, with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince marking the 19th feature title our companies have released together.”

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince set Imax opening weekend boxoffice records in numerous coutries including Russia, Ukraine, France, Hong Kong, India, Brazil, the U.K., Japan and the Philippines.

Only the opening 12 minutes of the film is in Imax 3D.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is continuing to shatter box office records.

In the latest news the film has broken the record for the largest five-day overseas opening in history, dragging in $237M internationally from 54 territories and 15,900 screens (eclipsing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End which opened May 23, 2007 and took $218.4 million over its first five days).

In the US Prince has become the sixth biggest domestic five day opener ever with $159.7M (The Dark Knight sits at no.1 with $203.8 million).

Warner have also announced that the film has achieved the largest Imax opening to date with 61 screens pulling in $3.6M.

As a result the worldwide total for the five day stretch hit $396.7M making the film the biggest five-day opener in history, passing Spider-Man 3’s $381.7 million set in 2007.

When the pic opened at midnight last Wednesday it passed The Dark Knight to become the biggest earning midnight box office opener of all time with $22.2M.

It went on to break the Japanese record by taking $3.57 million to pass War of the Worlds as the biggest opener in Japanese history.

In Australia the film achieved the third best opening day in history with $3.2M.

The international success of the Harry Potter films isn’t new.  Of the $4.48 billion the franchise has earned worldwide from the previous films $3.07 billion has been derived internationally.

Source: THR

Whilst Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince takes the world by storm it’s easy to forget that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is still making box office waves.

Now Michael Bay’s Transformers sequel has smashed the Chinese box office to become the biggest earning movie in the country, surpassing an 11 year old record set by James Cameron’s Titanic.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has taken the equivalent of US $59M (400 million Chinese yuan) in China.  The second highest earner in the country is now Titanic with $43M.

Unsurprisingly the film’s chinese showing was slightly censored.  During the opening sequence the Autobots and Decepticons battle in Shanghai, but when the U.S. military refer to where the battle is taking place the word is muffled.

As of now Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has earned US $350M and $383M internationally to sit pretty on $733M.  It has now out-earned its predecessor and is ranked 16th in the all time top grosser list.

Source: THR / Box Office Mojo

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has cleaned up at the box office in its first 24 hours, leaving new records in its wake.

When the pic opened at midnight on Wednesday it passed The Dark Knight to become the biggest earning midnight box office opener of all time with $22.2M.

It followed by taking $58.2M in the US and $45.9M internationally to finish with a whopping $104M in box office revenue in its first 24 hours – the biggest haul any Harry Potter film in the franchise has seen across the same time frame.

Further, the film has broken the Japanese record by taking $3.57 million to pass War of the Worlds with the biggest ever Wednesday opening in Japan.

In Australia Half Blood Prince is estimated to have grossed more than $3.2M marking it as the third best opening day gross ever in the country (behind only Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King).

Pundits expect Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to end up being the biggest earning Harry Potter film yet.  It seems the franchise will remain the highest earning movie franchise of all time for a long while to come.

Source: Variety

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has hauled an impressive $22.2M from 3,003 midnight performances to become the biggest earning midnight box office opener of all time.

The previous record was held by The Dark Knight with $18M.

The opening took place across 3,003 screens which will expand to 4,275 for it first full day of release.  By Friday it will be screening in 4,350 theaters.

“We’re ecstatic,” Warners domestic distribution president Dan Fellman said. “We owe a big thanks to the Harry Potter fans, who are supporting us so well even after the picture was moved back.”

I’d say we can expect to hear more record breaking news in the coming weeks.

Source: THR

'Harry Potter' stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint

Director David Yates has confirmed roughly 85% of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 has been shot and roughly 10% of Part 2.

Yates also confirmed that both Deathly Hallows movies will be very different than any of the preceding Harry Potter films, including the soon to be released sixth movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

“The first [Deathly Hallows] movie is a road movie basically, and it’s quite intense and very raw and we’re way away from Hogwarts, and it’s a bit like three refugees being pursued across the landscape by these terrible Death Eaters,” Yates said. “We’re really enjoying it actually. It feels very different. What’s hard about coming back to Half-Blood Prince is we finished it about a year ago or less. It’s weird coming back. The first one is very verité and documentary and edgy and on the road, and the second part is a big opera basically, a great big epic with huge battles and very oddly moving, because it concludes the whole saga really. So they’re two very different films.”

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliff adds, “‘I’m so excited about the seventh film. I don’t know if anybody else had the same experience as me over the last couple of days, but seeing the sixth film again, it does suddenly strike me that we are doing something very, very different with the 7th film.”

Emma Watson agrees. “It’s not very often that in the middle of the filmmaking process, you stop yourself and go ‘This is going to be awesome’ and I’ve done that on a number of occasions,” she said. “We’ve just done this amazing scene in the forest where we’re getting chased by the Snatchers, and I’ve never done anything like it, nothing even close. I’ve never really done any serious stunts or any real action, and it’s so exciting and just really dynamic. Because all of us are now finished with school and we’re all just totally focused on this finale. It’s out of Hogwarts, it’s just about the three of us. It’s going to be… well, I hope it’s going to be brilliant and it feels totally different. I feel like I’m on a different film. The other films have this structure: You know, we come into the Great Hall and there’s the opening talk and that’s just gone, it’s gone.”

Harry Potter and the Death Hallows Pt 1 will be released November 19, 2010.

Harry Potter and the Death Hallows Pt 2 will be released July 15 ,2011.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be released this week on July 15.

Source: Coming Soon

The most recent Harry Potter news relates to actor Rupert Grint (aka Ron Weasley) who was confirmed as having contracted swine flu.

“It was quite scary when I first found out I had swine flu,” Grint said at a press conference.  “I thought ‘Am I going to die?’ But it was just like any other flu really. I had a sore throat and I went to bed for a few days.”

With that out of the way, HBO have previewed a ‘First Look ‘ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince special and thanks to Trailer Addict you can watch it below (in two parts) if you missed it.

Read the rest of this entry »

An exclusive clip from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that was shown during the 2009 MTV Movie Awards:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens in theaters Wednesday July 15.