With the Harry Potter franchise earning crazy amounts of money in the region of $800 – $950 million per film you’d expect it to give other franchises a run for their money (pun intended) in terms of ‘highest grossing franchise ever’. It’s taken a few years but it looks like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be the film that tips the franchise over the $5 billion worldwide mark, overtaking the Bond franchise in the process and taking the highest grossing movie franchise in the history of ever crown.
From Variety:
The five previous “Harry Potter” pics have grossed $4.48 billion at the worldwide box office. That still trails the roughly $5 billion grossed by the James Bond film franchise (not accounting for inflation), but the boy wizard is expected to overtake agent 007 within the month.
The sixth installment, grossed a record-breaking $22.2 million in midnight releases unspooling in 3,003 theaters at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. That more than beat the $18 million midnight record set last summer by Warners’ “The Dark Knight.”
Everyone expects Half-Blood Prince to make big numbers, however it seems the lack of anything Potter related over the past 2 years (no book, no film) has caused anticipation to sky rocket, which could cause it to start breaking a few records. Warner Bros. still have two movies and another $2 billion to go, but they will have to start planning ahead. After 2011 their cash cow will be gone (in terms of movie releases anyway, I expect them to milk the franchise with DVDs, box sets, extended editions and all that jazz for years to come).
Prometheus
The Dark Knight Rises
The Hobbit
Man of Steel
Amazing Spider-Man
Skyfall
Star Trek 2
The Wolverine