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Box Office Review: Boy wizard stupefies North America
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix blew away not only the competition, but its own previous franchise records this week with a 140 million dollar opening 5 days. Expect Potter mania to reach its full flowering later this week when the 7th and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, reaches stores. Transformers held steady at number two, dropping only 49% from the previous week (movies typically drop well over 50% after week one) and adding 36 million to its already fat pile of cash. Transformers now sits at 222.9 million and should become the 4th movie this summer to reach 300 million (assuming Order of the Phoenix doesn't do it first).
The rest of the top 10 played out like a near-mirror image from last week. Ratatouille was a strong third with 18M (143M). Likewise, Live Free or Die Hard kept a firm hold on fourth with an additional 10.8M, becoming the third film in the Die Hard series to cross the million dollar mark (102.9M). After that it was the dreadful License to Wed (7.4M, 30.5M), 1408 (5M, 62M), the even more dreadful Evan Almighty (finally saw it; hated it--4.9M, 87.8M), Knocked Up (3.6M, 138.1M), Sicko (2.6M, 15.8M) and Ocean's Thirteen (1.9M, 112.4M)
Among other new releases, Captivity seized on a flood of bad press to lay a total egg (1.5M). Whither the once promising career of mega-hottie Elisha Cuthbert? The other newbies were all indies in limited release. Talk to Me performed well with an $11,848 per screen average. French film My Best Friend did even better, netting $15,500 per, and Sundance fave Interview picked up $6,933. I saw Interview this weekend (and will review it later today). In short, I am now a complete Sienna Miller fan. She was amazing. Flame on!
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