'Harry Potter' Is Still Performing Magic at the Box Office

[David K. M. Klaus]

An entire *quarter* of the continent's movie screens had Harry Potter 
showing on them over the weekend.

The original article may be found at 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/movies/18POTT.html?tntemail0>.


QUOTED TEXT BEGINS:

"'Harry Potter' Is Still Performing Magic at the Box Office"

by Rick Lyman

Los Angeles, Nov. 17 -- Little of the zap, apparently, has gone out of Harry 
Potter's wizard's wand.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, the second film in the lucrative 
Warner Brothers franchise series, opened this weekend with numbers nearly as 
large as those drawn last November by its hype-propelled first installment, 
HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE.

Despite a 2-hour-46-minute running time, "Chamber" earned an estimated $87.7 
million in its first three days in theaters, a scant three percent less than 
the first film's $90.2 million.

"For it to even be in this realm is pretty spectacular," said Paul 
Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, a Los Angeles-based company 
that monitors box-office returns.  "It says that not only is the franchise 
alive and well, it's as potent today as it was a year ago."

The success of "Chamber of Secrets" was partly driven by its being the 
widest release of any film in movie history, playing at 3,682 theaters 
across North America, ten more than the first film did last year.

And because many of those theaters are multiplexes, with the film playing in 
two, three, or sometimes more auditoriums, there were actually 8,515 prints 
up on screens this weekend, compared with 8,119 last year.  In other words, 
"Chamber of Secrets" was playing on roughly one of every four screens in 
North America.  Also, there was widespread speculation in Hollywood this 
morning that Warner Brothers was being overly conservative in its weekend 
estimate.  Some studios projected that "Chamber of Secrets" had earned well 
over $90 million, perhaps even more than the original film.  Dan Fellman, 
Warner Brothers' president
for distribution, said that he knew his estimate of Sunday ticket sales was 
on the safe side, and that there was a reasonable chance that when final 
weekend box-office numbers become available on Monday the actual three-day 
take for the film may be somewhat higher.  "We could conceivably come up a 
little bit," Mr. Fellman said.

Even if these early numbers hold, it would give "Chamber of Secrets" the
third biggest opening in movie history, though still far below the $115 
million debut for Columbia Pictures' SPIDER-MAN last May.

For years, studio marketing executives have been criticized for being overly 
optimistic with their Sunday estimates, perhaps to place a film higher on 
the Monday morning box-office charts.  Just last weekend, for instance, 
Universal Pictures estimated that 8 MILE, the film debut for the rap singer 
Eminem, had made more than $54 million when the actual number turned out to 
be closer to $51 million.

To go the other way, though, and purposely estimate a film's revenue
lower -- perhaps in hopes of reaping a second day of publicity when final 
numbers prove the film to be an even bigger success than expected -- is a 
rarer tactic.  Mr. Fellman, however, insisted that this was not what he was 
doing.  He simply looked at last year's 'Harry Potter' numbers, saw that the 
film's one-day box office dropped by 27 percent between Saturday and Sunday, 
and applied the same percentage to this
year's Saturday figure.  Whether the actual Sunday drop-off proves to be 
that steep this year remains to be seen.

The weekend numbers compiled on Sundays are based on actual ticket sales 
from Friday and Saturday and the releasing studio's own estimate for Sunday. 
  More precise numbers, based on actual Sunday ticket sales, are not 
available until Monday.

Whatever the case, "Harry Potter" has provided an explosive opening to the 
year-end holiday movie season, second only to the dog days of summer as the 
most lucrative for Hollywood studios.  And this year the holiday season 
looks even more like summer than usual, with several high-profile sequels 
and special-effects blockbusters due out between now and year's end, 
including DIE ANOTHER DAY, the 20th James Bond adventure;  STAR TREK:  
NEMESIS, the latest installment in the durable science-fiction series; and 
THE LORD OF THE RINGS:  THE TWO TOWERS, the second chapter in that hugely 
popular fantasy series.

Eminem's film debut, meanwhile, dropped by a sizable 58 percent in its 
second weekend in release.  Still, 8 MILE earned an estimated $21.3 million 
for a ten-day total of more than $86 million, far more than the movie had 
been expected to make so soon.

Much of the notable action was taking place farther down the box-office
list, where smaller independent films were continuing to show surprising
strength.  MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, already a certifiable phenomenon since 
its release in May, continued to play astonishingly strongly.  In its 31st 
week in theaters, it still landed in sixth place with a cumulative total of 
$199.6 million.  Another independent film that performed strongly this 
weekend was Atom Egoyan's ARARAT, a drama about the mass killings of 
Armenians that earned an average of $32,400 in just five theaters.

Also showing surprising resilience were two recent studio releases.  
Disney's SANTA CLAUSE 2, a family-oriented sequel, was in third place this 
weekend, earning $15.1 million for a cumulative total of $82.5 million, 
while DreamWorks' horror hit THE RING was in fourth place with $11 million 
for a cumulative total of $101.6 million.  It became the seventeenth film of 
the year to surpass $100 million at the box office.

              ###

Copyright The New York Times Company


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-------------------------------------
David K. M. Klaus
P. O. Box 78232
St. Louis, Mo., 63178-8232
(314) HYpergolic 0-6521 (numeric pager)
david_k_m_klaus at hotmail.com
davidklaus at webtv.net

[When e-mailing to me, be sure to cc: the other of the two above addresses 
as well, to ensure delivery.  Thank you.]

"Not only has John Ashcroft misplaced his copy of the Constitution, I'm not 
sure he ever read it."  -- Tamara Millay, Flame-Haired Constitutionalist
-------------------------------------

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