Harry was already cracking vinyl, just a week prior to it's scheduled release, by filling all of some 500 theatre preview screenings - that's after unprecedented pre-sales across the country racked up millions of keen fantasy flick fans.
Screen International reported sales from the previews alone amounted to nearly USD10m, that's a per screen mean of nearly 20 large.
Even the most sceptical analyst cannot now deny Harry's titanic potential when it opens Friday 16 and woe be tide any film that happens to coincide with it.
Before this devastating success takes place, the wartime Kidman spooky The Others has stayed top of a quivering Brit Boffo for the second week with UKP1.7m. In second place is the sassy Witherspoon comedy, Legally Blonde, which knocked American Pie 2 down to third.
Despite the hype a number of Yank hacks have been slightly critical of Harry and his imminent Midas touch. The hilarious Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, praised the film throughout but of the climax, "We wait with open mouths, and what do we get? Pure graphics: computer-generated imagery, writhing in anguish -- in need of the sorcerer's stone, apparently, although it looked to me as if the forces of ultimate evil were badly wanting the men's room."
Meanwhile Screen's highbrow critic Emanuel Levy hummed, "from a strictly artistic viewpoint, Harry Potter is not a particularly exciting film."
Displaying a rather peculiar sense of timing, Harry star Zoë Wanamaker has stamped her feet about her salary in the next film. The presumptuous thespess told the Sunday Times, "We have all been cyber-scanned so we can all be replicated [in computer games]. It's bad form. Even the costume designer who came up with these amazing creations will get no residuals. It's shocking and disgraceful. ... Some actors signed three-film deals but the money was so crap I was insulted so just signed for one. If they want me for a second they will have to up their rates."
This week... Cinemas Admit record Year >>> Euro adds to UK's film woes >>> Britfilm Investment Sinks 10% in 2001 >>> (Stewart) Till We Meet Again >>> Jean-Marie's Mess >>> Snow White & The 7 Sequels >>> Brian Cox in Good Spirit >>> And also... >>>
Screen International reported sales from the previews alone amounted to nearly USD10m, that's a per screen mean of nearly 20 large.