As the sixth movie in the Harry Potter franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is released this week, The Nielsen Company has prepared an overview of the impact of the two series across media.

Book Sales*

*Includes all formats of the book (i.e. hardcover, paperback, audio, etc.). Does not include sales prior to BookScan launch Janaury 2001.

Box Office

The first movie in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, opened on 11/16/01 bringing in $90.1 million in its opening weekend, and going on to haul in a total of $317.6 million domestically. The most recent release, 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, had the largest opening day total of the series with $44.2 million on Wednesday 7/11/07. With each movie in the series debuting at #1 on its opening weekend and raking in $200+ million in the U.S, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has some pretty big goblets to fill.


Twilight has also proved popular among moviegoers as the first installment of the series took in $69.9 million and the top spot at the box office in its opening weekend and a domestic total of $191.4 million.

Soundtrack

Although both franchises include big-budget theatrical releases, the style of their soundtracks is worlds apart. The Harry Potter soundtracks play more like the movie’s score with noted composer John Williams authoring the first three soundtracks in the series which have combined album sales of over a million copies to-date. Twilight’s soundtrack includes a compilation of songs performed by popular artists – film’s star Robert Pattinson even recorded an original track – and has sold just over 2.1 million copies since its release.

Television

So far this year Harry Potter movies have aired a total of 33 times on cable nets ABC Family, Disney Channel, HBO and Cinemax with ABC Family claiming four out of the five most-watched telecasts.

Online Buzz

Buzz tracking the two franchises shows that Harry Potter still dominates buzz, even amid the week where the Twilight movie is making its debut in the fall of 2008. [click to enlarge buzz graph]

Video Games – Total Unaided Awareness Mentions

TW – Week of April 20 / LW – Week of April 13

Warner Brothers’ comedy “Four Christmases” dropped to second place, with $13.3 million over the weekend and an $88 million cumulative take over three weeks of release.

Summit’s vampire romance “Twilight” finished third over the weekend, with an $8 million performance and a $150.1 million cumulative take over four weeks of release.

Industrywide, year-to-date totals for 2008 are outpacing the same portion of 2007 grosses by 1%, at $9.01 billion.

Below are Box Office totals for the weekend of December 12-14, 2008 from Nielsen EDI.

Summit Entertainment’s vampire film “Twilight” took in an estimated $13 million to reclaim second place from Disney’s CG-animated feature “Bolt”, which earned an estimated $9.7 million to finish third.

Below are Box Office totals for the weekend of December 5-7, 2008, from Nielsen EDI.

The Vince Vaughn-Reese Witherspoon vehicle has taken in an approximately $46.7 million since arriving in theaters on Wednesday, one of three films positioned to make full use of a holiday-lengthened weekend.

Disney’s CG-animated feature “Bolt” had a saw a surprising 1% increase from its opening totals a week earlier, registering $26.6 million to rise from third to second place at the Box Office. The impressive comeback performance boosted the film’s 10-day cumulative take to $66.9 million.

Summit Entertainment’s youth-targeting vampire film “Twilight” attracted $26.4 million in total gross over the weekend, dropping it from first to a third-place performance.

Below are Box Office totals for the weekend of November 28-30, 2008, from Nielsen EDI.

“Quantum of Solace,” the latest James Bond film from Sony and MGM, came in second over the weekend with $27.4 million, shaping a 10-day cumulative take of $109.5 million.

Across the industry, the overall weekend take of $169 million marked a 4% overall improvement over the same time frame last year, according to Nielsen EDI. That makes eight of the last nine weekends that overall industry takes have beaten year-over-year comparisons.

Below are Box Office totals for the weekend of November 21-23, 2008, from Nielsen EDI.

The family comedy “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa,” from DreamWorks Animation and Paramount, registered $36.1 million to land in second place over the weekend.

Overall, the weekend’s $154 million in collective boxoffice across the industry marked a 48% improvement over the same weekend last year, according to Nielsen EDI.

Below are Box Office totals for the weekend of November 14-16, 2008, from Nielsen EDI.

Universal’s new R-rated comedy “Role Models” finished second with a $19.3 million debut that also comfortably topped projections.

Overall, the weekend’s $148 million industrywide total represented a considerable 30% improvement over the same weekend last year, according to Nielsen EDI. 

Below are Box Office totals for the weekend of November 7-9, 2008, from Nielsen EDI.