As expected, all things Harry Potter remain magic at the box office.
Proof of that came over the weekend when Warner Bros. fantasy sequel "
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" conjured up a $77.4 million debut and top spot.
The previous weekend's No. 1, "
Transformers," slipped to second place with $36 million while the weekend's other new wide release, grisly horror story "
Captivity" opened out of the top 10 with $1.55 million. The movie stars
Elisha Cuthbert as a model who is abducted and tortured.
But no one else was crazy enough to tangle with Harry, and he alone expanded overall business for Hollywood. The top 12 movies took in $171.1 million, up 14 per cent from the same weekend last year when "
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" was on top.
"We're in the middle of summer, and we just said why not, because kids are out of school," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros. "It certainly turned out to be the right decision."
"Order of the Phoenix" did more business in its first five days than each of the first three "Harry Potter" movies did in their first full week.
"People are going to have Potter mania happening again when the book comes out," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "They'll be walking book in hand into the movie theatre."
Here's the rest of the weekend's top 10, with all figures estimated according to Media By Numbers LLC.
1. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," $77.4 million.
2. "Transformers," $36 million.
3. "
Ratatouille," $18 million.
4. "
Live Free or Die Hard," $10.9 million.
5. "
License to Wed," $7.4 million.
6. "
1408," $5.01 million.
7. "
Evan Almighty," $5 million.
8. "
Knocked Up," $3.7 million.
9. "
Sicko," $2.65 million.
10. "
Ocean's Thirteen," $1.9 million.