Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth film the popular series of VFX-heavy live-action book adaptations, has conjured up the biggest midnight opening gross in history.
The Warner Bros. film opened just after midnight Wednesday on just over 3,000 screens and took in $22.2 million, Variety reports.
The total bests the previous record of $18 million, which belonged to another Warner Bros. film, last year’s The Dark Knight.
It also bested this year’s box-office leader, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which also opened on a Wednesday and took in $16 million in midnight screenings.
Directed by David Yates, The Half-Blood Prince features top-of-the-line vfx-driven magical sequences, courtesy of Cinesite, ILM, Double Negative, Gentle Giant Studios, Rising Sun Pictures, CEG Media and The Visual Effects Company. Especially breath-taking is the film’s haunting climatic scene which has Dumbledore and Harry fighting an army of Golum-like creatures in a deadly island.
Warner Bros. is preparing the final two installments (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 and 2) for November 2010 and 2011 release dates.
