Potter vs. Potter

Some of the wizards in training as seen in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Photograph courtesy of Warner Brothers Pictures.

Coordinating the releases of the seventh and final Harry Potter book and the film version of the fifth book seems to have achieved the desired effect: We're in a month of Harry hysteria.

But while the dual release might have been designed to benefit both film distributor Warner Brothers and publisher Scholastic, in this case, Hollywood found itself in the rare position of riding the publishing industry's coattails.

After all, when was the last time that a book release outshined a movie opening?

This weekend Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold a record-breaking 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours on shelf in the United States, according to Scholastic.

Just a week earlier, Warner Brothers' adaptation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix shot to the top box office rankings in its opening weekend with $77,108,414 in ticket sales.

That means that the book, listed at $34.99 a copy, pulled in far more cash in its first days on the shelf than the movie did during its opening weekend.

From the sound of things, Warner Brothers feels it got the raw end of the publicity deal.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix slipped to the No. 2 spot this weekend behind the new buddy movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. The studio gripes that box office receipts were marred post-book-release, when their target audience became otherwise occupied ... reading.

"They wanted to get that book Saturday, lock themselves in the house and read it, because they didn't want their other friends by Monday telling them who made it and who didn't," Dan Fellman, Warner Brothers' head of distribution, told the Associated Press.

The $32,185,000 the studio scored in ticket sales on the second weekend is hardly chump change, but it doesn't appear to be the number they were looking for.

How will the franchise's total revenue from book sales vs. movie tickets ultimately compare? We'll have to wait for the final two Potter films to find out.

But one thing is for sure: whether Scholastic or Warner Brothers comes out on top, when it's Harry Potter against Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling always wins.

by Liz Gunnison