Thaindian News

LOS ANGELES (BNO NEWS) — Warner Bros. on Monday said that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 earned $330.1 million worldwide during its first weekend in theaters, collecting 26 percent more than last year’s sequel.

The new seventh film in the Harry Potter series earned an estimated $205 million from foreign countries from Thursday to Sunday. In the United States market, the penultimate installment of the franchise earned $125 million at the weekend box-office beating the previous opening record for the series.

In 2005, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire collected $102.7 million in its first weekend in theaters. This year, the new film enjoyed one of the biggest-ever global box-office debuts, without accounting for rising ticket prices and changes in foreign-currency conversions.

In the United Kingdom, the new Harry Potter film registered earnings of $28 million; in Germany $21.8 million; Australia $14.8 million; Japan $14 million; Russia $12.3 million; and Mexico $10.2 million.

The film registered good figures despite some controversy as the content is not as in the first movies which were more children-oriented. The new installment was marketed with sophisticated, darker elements of the plot. Some posters and billboards depicted the letters “HP7″ written in something that looked like blood. Others depicted the Hogwarts castle in flames.

Reports indicate that about 25 percent of the North American audience for the latest film was in the 18-to-34-year-old demographic, in contrast with the 10 percent of this sector that watched the first movie of the Harry Potter franchise.

Earlier last week, about 36 minutes of the film, the first segment, was leaked onto the Internet. Many believed that the leak could affect the film’s opening weekend but the figures resulting from it indicate otherwise.