Big Picture

Michele Williams: Paris Pretty Plus, Victoria Beckham struts and Courteney Cox steals a smooch. Get the latest pics!

MORE PHOTOS +

Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player.

Fashion Police

Leighton's Valentine's Look Plus, Ashlee Simpson and Cate Blanchett. Rate the highs and lows!

MORE PHOTOS +

Top Galleries

MORE PHOTOS +

Our Partners

Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player.

Potter Witching-Hour Shows Scare Up $12 Mil

Wed., Jul. 11, 2007 2:26 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

Harry Potter hasn't had this much exposure since Daniel Radcliffe dropped trou on the London stage.

The teenage wizard conjured up an estimated $12 million from midnight Wednesday screenings of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Exhibitor Relations said.

The take was nearly $4 million more than reigning box-office champ Transformers grossed all of Tuesday, and was a brightly flashing sign that the robot movie's stay at number one was over.

"I was out last night, and I saw lines of kids in tents," Exhibitor Relations' Jeff Bock said, describing the scene outside an Order of the Phoenix theater in suburban Los Angeles.

With the light of day came even more Potter and doubtless even more ticket sales. The midnight screenings were hosted at about 2,300 theaters. Wednesday's formal opening was to play at 4,285 theaters, the second-biggest release ever, behind Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which set the bar at 4,362 in May.

Bock said Order of the Phoenix could take a run at Spider-Man 2's record for the biggest Wednesday opening ($40.4 million, set in 2004) and, by the end of the coming weekend, could have upwards of $120 million in its tank.

Currently, the first Potter movie, 2001's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, stands as the series' top grosser, with $317.6 million.

On Tuesday, the ticket-buying service Fandango said Order of the Phoenix was doing bigger preopening-day business than either the latest Pirates movie or Spider-Man 3. Rival MovieTickets.com said the new Potter film was sixth on its list of all-time prerelease ticket sales. (At World's End was fifth; the final Star Wars prequel film, Revenge of the Sith, was number one.)

Getting in on the press-release act, Imax announced Order of the Phoenix would set an Imax record by playing on 126 of its giant-screen theaters from the United States to the Czech Republic.

Concerning themselves with the film, and not the release-related bombast, the nation's film critics had their say, too.

The back-to-work Roger Ebert awarded Order of the Phoenix two and a half stars in a review for the Chicago Sun-Times. He called the franchise's fifth installment, directed by Potter first-timer David Yates—who's also helming the sixth installment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, due out next year—"well-crafted" but joyless.

"Whatever happened to the delight and, if you'll excuse the term, the magic in the Harry Potter series?" Ebert asked.

Slate.com's Dana Stevens also found the movie to be dark—not that that's a bad thing. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix pulls off a feat that would have been impossible in my own adolescence: I left it dying for school to start again," Stevens wrote.

In Newsweek, David Ansen made it unanimous: The 15-year-old Harry Potter (played by the 17-year-old Radcliffe) is one angry young man, which for the purposes of the movie, he found, isn't a great thing, because "the screenplay doesn't give him enough to play off of—-his newly embattled relationships with Ron and Hermione didn't make it to the screen."

Overall, the movie was drawing more good vibes than bad, per the review-tracking site Rotten Tomatoes. As of Wednesday afternoon, its Tomatometer rating stood at a juicy 75 percent, with 94 positive reviews versus 32 "rotten" ones.

Potter mania will shortly shift to bookstores, where Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final novel in author J.K. Rowling's series, hits shelves on July 21.

After that, the wizard can step away from the spotlight and spend more time with his family. Until the next two Potter movies come out, that is.