Harry Potter 7-2 total admissions - 444,170 (407,593 3D)

Magic was made at the box office as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 opened to a whopping 444,170 admissions. It more than doubled Deathly Hallows Part 1's opening weekend admissions and posted a bigger opening Saturday and Sunday than Toy Story 3. It managed to outperform Transformers 3 on the comparable Sunday but Harry Potter had no holiday help to boost its admissions. Still, it managed to do just about 90% of Transformers 3's 4-day admissions. Over 90% of its admissions were 3D with 2D only scoring 8%. On Thursday, it posted a tally of over 100,000 admissions, an admissions record for a non-holiday opening day. It also set a non-holiday opening day record gross with $790,625. It then fell 14% on Friday but managed to recover Saturday and rise 46% before flattening out on Sunday. After seeing its Thursday actuals and finding out about its low ratio of gross:admissions, I don't think 4m is possible for the weekend. To me, it looks like this will be around 3.7m with a chance of 3.8m. This is still an excellent start and it is a dominating performance.

As for the others, Mr. Popper's Penguins managed to outduel Transformers for 2nd spot in admissions as it lead throughout the weekend. Its weekend showtimes were cut to make room for more Harry Potter and this cut into its gross a bit. It increased every day this week but it was still not enough to defeat Transformers 3 in gross. A $400,000 2nd weekend is looking good and would put it around 1.75-1.8m for its 11-day total.

Transformers 3 tried to hold strong in the face of direct competition and somewhat succeeded. It was somewhat hampered on Thursday and Friday but theaters could no longer ignore its strong pre-sales and left it with 1 screen on the weekend. This lead to a smaller admissions gap between Popper's and Transformers but a wider one in terms of gross. For the weekend, it should take in about $670,000 for a total of $9.75m. 10m should be crossed by Wednesday before Kung Fu Panda 2 opens.

Others not listed such as The Tree of Life got its showtimes cut on the weekend so a 55% drop would give it about $60,000 for the weekend. Beach Spike got completely wiped out on the weekend as its low ticket sales gave theaters a case to cut its showtimes in favor of Harry Potter. It will fall around 86% for the weekend.