Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince breaks records already

As the last major blockbuster of the summer - unless G.I. Joe does something spectacularly impressive next month - it was already being speculated that Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince might have enough in the tank to give Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen a run for its money. Certainly the early reports were that its pre-bookings were ahead of anything else this year, and the first signs of just how potent a hit Warner Bros had on its hands were due when the midnight screening figures came in from the US.

Yikes.

From its first midnight screenings, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince pulled in a staggering $22.2m. In one night, it took nearly as much as Eddie Murphy's last two movies combined, and easily beat the total from midnight screenings of the last film, Order Of The Phoenix ($12m).

And it's a number too that not only sees it tracking ahead of Transformers 2, but also last summer's The Dark Knight, which held the previous record for first-day midnight screenings. The Dark Knight pulled in $18m, and there's now serious speculation that Harry Potter is going to grab a record-breaking five day box office haul. Transformers managed just over $200m in the same time frame, and it would not be wise now to bet against Harry Potter 6 doing similar numbers.

The weekend's box office figures are certainly set to make interesting reading. And you can find out more about Half-Blood Prince's midnight take at Variety.