Battle at the Box Office 7/18

The question this weekend wasn’t “Would Deathly Hallows Part 2 have a big weekend?” but rather, “How big a weekend would Deathly Hallows Part 2 have?” and the answer is the biggest opening weekend of all time. The final Harry Potter movie made $168.5 million beating the The Dark Knight’s $158.4 million opening weekend. Deathly Hallows Part 2 also had the highest ever midnight release and the highest opening day gross (it made $43.1 million in midnight shows and $92.1 million on Friday).   Obviously this is also the best opening for the Harry Potter franchise as well, beating Deathly Hallows Part 1’s opening of $125 million.  In a far, far distant second, Tranformers: Dark of the Moon made another $21 million, putting it’s total over $300 million.  Horrible Bosses took the third spot with $17.6 million, Zookeeper took fourth with $12.3 million and Cars 2 rounded out the top 5 with $8.3 million.  Not surprisingly, Winnie the Pooh suffered from opening opposite Deathly Hallows, coming in sixth place with $8 million.  It’s the second best opening for the franchise but it’s probably going to be quickly forgotten in the coming weeks.