The latest “Harry Potter” movie cast a $104 million spell over worldwide box offices during its first day in theaters, setting a new record for the boy wizard, distributor Warner Bros Pictures said on Thursday. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth in the film series based on the popular books by J.K. Rowling, grossed $58.18 million in North America and $45.85 million overseas on Wednesday, the Time Warner Inc-owned studio said. The latest “Harry Potter” also ranks as the fourth-highest single-day gross for a film release in North America, behind No. 1 “Dark Knight” ($67.1 million), No. 2 “Transformers: Revenge,” and third-place “Spider-Man 3” ($59.8 million). “Quite simply, we owe this record-breaking opening to the remarkable fans who have stood by us and who stood in line to be among the first to see ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,'” Warner Bros President and Chief Operating Officer Alan Horn said in a statement. Said Dergarabedian: “This is a tremendous opening. It's in the box office stratosphere.” The previous “Harry Potter” movie, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” also opened on a Wednesday last year with first-day domestic receipts of $44.2 million. That film went on to gross $937 million worldwide. The first five films in the franchise, one of the most lucrative in Hollywood history, have so far taken in about $4.5 billion collectively at the global box office.
