The film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone shattered box office records in the United States when it opened at the weekend. Showing on one in four cinema screens throughout the country, it took in $93.5 million (€106 million) in ticket sales from Friday to Sunday, soaring beyond the record for a three-day opening weekend held by Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park since 1997.
The movie also broke records in Britain where it is known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, taking in £16 million sterling (€25.7 million) over the opening weekend.
A two-year promotion and marketing campaign by Warner Bros also enabled the enchanting film to top box office records for one-day ticket sales, taking in $31.6 million on Friday compared with the previous best of $28.5 million by Phantom Menace in 1999. It then beat its own record on Saturday with $32.9 million.
Harry Potter, with a built-in audience guaranteed by the huge popularity of J K Rowling's series of Harry Potter adventures, is now expected to be the movie to make $100 million in the shortest time. It almost certainly exceeded that target yesterday after four days, beating Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace which took five days to reach $100 million.
"We obviously knew going in we were going to have a great opening," said Mr Dan Fellman, Warner's head of distribution, but "nobody anticipated such a staggering number that would shatter every industry record".
The film, directed by Chris Columbus and starring Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, is based on Ms Rowling's first book, in which an English boy, Harry Potter, discovers he inherited magical powers from his parents, a pair of wizards killed by a powerful enemy, and is invited to become a student at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Production of the first sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, began yesterday in London and Warner Brothers plans to have it ready for screening within a year. The studio hopes to do a third Harry Potter film in 2003 with the same stars. It has secured the rights to four of the planned seven books in the series. In its marketing campaign, the parent company, AOL Time Warner, put all its resources into hyping the film, ensuring that AOL promoted the movie relentlessly on its America Online home page.
The two hours and 32 minutes running time may work against the film continuing to break records, as it is considered too long for adults to sit through a second time - a major factor in breaking box office records over the long term.
The need for escapism after September 11th has helped, according to Mr Paul Dergarabedian, president of Los Angeles-based Exhibitor Relations, which tracks box office receipts.
"I think in the wake of September 11th, people are looking for entertainment close to home," he said. "Harry Potter plays right into that. It's a fantasy world people can get out of the house and enjoy for a few hours, but stay relatively close to home.
"There aren't enough adjectives to describe how spectacular this opening weekend for Potter has been. It's one of those few times when you don't have to add a lot of qualifiers. It's the biggest opening weekend of all time, bar none."
The success of Harry Potter means that this year will be the first when more than $8 billion was spent at the North American box office, beating last year's record of $7.7 billion.
