So the final Harry Potter book is out there. I haven’t read any of the books. Some love them, some hate them, some try to steer away from the hype, but overall we can’t ignore their magic.
Her credit to JK Rowling for giving the "whole fantasy field a boost" is tinged with regret. "I didn’t feel she ripped me off, as some people did," she says quietly, "though she could have been more gracious about her predecessors. My incredulity was at the critics who found the first book wonderfully original. She has many virtues, but originality isn’t one of them. That hurt."
I’m having a day of mixed feelings: happy because I’m reading the manuscript of a novel that’s full of magic, mystery, and monsters; sad because it will be finished tomorrow and on my shelf, with all its secrets told and its surviving characters set free to live their own lives (if characters have lives beyond the end of a novel — I’ve always felt they do).
Falling down one spot to the runnerup position was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which grossed an estimated $32.2M in its sophomore session. Down a steep 58%, the Warner Bros. release lifted its 12-day cume to a stunning $207.5M. Second weekend declines are typically large for high-profile tentpole films. Phoenix‘s drop was a bit smaller than the 62% for both Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End which each debuted on a Friday in May. However, it was larger than the drops for fellow midweek openers Live Free or Die Hard and Transformers which witnessed sophomore declines of 47% and 48%, respectively.
The new Potter film had to compete with the arrival of the seventh and final wizard book on Saturday which appealed to the exact same audience and probably kept many away from the multiplexes.