Harry Potter dominates the weekend box office with $79.5 million opening

So apparently not everyone agrees with me about Half-Blood Prince. Though it failed to set an opening day record, it managed to consistently pull in more than $20 million a day through the weekend. Potter pulled in an estimated $26.8 million on Friday, $29.2 million on Saturday, and $23.4 million on Sunday. These aren't mind-blowing numbers, but they are consistent.

Here's a comparison of the opening weekends of all six Potter movies.

• $90,294,621: The Sorcerer's Stone
• $88,357,488: The Chamber of Secrets
• $93,687,367: The Prisoner of Azkaban
• $102,335,066: The Goblet of Fire
• $77,108,414: The Order of the Phoenix
• $79,475,000: The Half-Blood Prince

Below are the opening day numbers for each movie.

• $32,333,203: The Sorcerer's Stone
• $29,631,453: The Chamber of Secrets
• $38,268,295: The Prisoner of Azkaban
• $40,118,363: The Goblet of Fire
• $44,232,338: The Order of the Phoenix
• $58,175,412: The Half-Blood Prince

Half-Blood Prince had a slower weekend than some earlier installments. However, it's opening numbers were much higher, out grossing them all on day one. Potter 6 also had no opening weekend competition and opened during the summer blockbuster season. Perhaps it was affected by the Twittery box office after all.

In other box office news, 500 Days of Summer managed to pull in $838,000 from only 27 theaters. Here's hoping this film comes to my town soon! The Hangover pulled in another $8.3 million in its seventh (!) weekend, bringing its 45 day total to $236 million. This film is going to pull in spectacular DVD sales numbers. Bruno did not have a good second weekend. The raunchy comedy fell more than 70% from last weekend, clocking in at $8.4 million.

The top 5 for the weekend are below..

Weekend Box Office for 7/17/2009
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	$79,475,000
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs	$17,700,000
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen	$13,750,000
Bruno	$8,373,565
Hangover	$8,315,000