Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $22 million in post-midnight screenings.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince grossed $22.2 million in midnight screenings last night (besting The Dark Knight's midnight record by $4 million). That's no surprise, since very single midnight screening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was sold out last night. Out of curiosity, I surfed around Fandango and Moviewatcher and looked up every zip code I could think of. Even theaters with over a dozen screenings, even in places like Riverside, California... every theater had resorted to 3am screenings (and some of those were sold out too). I'm not sure I've ever seen that before.

Obviously this means that The Dark Knight's $67 million opening day is in serious jeopardy, but don't expect any five-day records to fall. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix had one of the lowest opening Wednesday-to-five day weekend multipliers in history. It opened with $12 million in midnight screenings, a $44 million first full Wednesday, and then a $139 million five-day total (a multiplier of about 3.16x). This is all the more impressive as this massive midnight number was accomplished without the added IMAX boost that The Dark Knight, Transformers 2, and the previous two Harry Potter films all enjoyed. More to come when the Wednesday numbers roll in, but it's going to be massive. Scott Mendelson