Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II nets $92.1m in single day, crushing the single day record and heading towards new opening weekend record ($175-185 million seems likely).

In November 2001, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone set a new opening weekend record by grossing $90.2 million in three days.  Yesterday, the series finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II (review) grossed $92.1 million in a single day. Let that sink in for a moment.  Yes, the eighth and final chapter of the Harry Potter series overtook the single-day record from The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which had grossed $72.7 million on its opening Friday back in (same weekend, natch) mid-November 2009.  Yes, some of this 26% increase can be attributed to the 3D price-bump (I imagine that Summit is in a room right now convincing themselves to convert the last two Twilight films to 3D).  And yes, the film earned a record 47% of its opening day total at midnight alone ($43.5 million).  But I'll let someone else complain about that.  Even with inflation and 3D prices taken into account, the film still sold 11.7 million tickets, the most ever for a single day (and a little over 2 million more than The Dark Knight and Twilight Saga: New Moon).  Even if Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II has the most front-loaded opening weekend in history (African Cats has the record with a 1.81x weekend multiplier), it still will likely dethrone The Dark Knight ($158 million) as the new opening weekend champion.

As I wrote yesterday, the numbers for frontloading in several areas would still merit a massive and record breaking weekend.  Even a semi-embarrassing 1.75x weekend multiplier would net Harry Potter 7.2 $159 million for the Fri-Sun period.  Even a semi-embarrassing weekend where the midnight grosses made up 25% of the weekend would still give the film $174 million for the weekend (the last Harry Potter film has the dubious honor with 19% of its $125 million gross coming from midnight showings).  If the film has just the 2.02x weekend multiplier of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I, it still gets $186 million by Sunday.  If it has the lowest multiplier amongst the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises (1.96x for Twilight Saga: New Moon), it still gets to $180 million by Sunday, which looks like the likely result. Of course, if this were any other franchise other than Harry Potter and Twilight, we'd be looking at some insurmountable figures here.  If the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II was able to hold even a 2.2x weekend multiplier (pathetic for any other franchise), it get the first $200 million weekend. While that may be out of reach, it will have to collapse on an epic level to not break the opening weekend record.

Scott Mendelson