In what is certainly the most notable movie leak in some time, the first 36 minutes of the latest Harry Potter film are now widely available on the Internet.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, will debut in the U.S. on Friday.
The “extended clip,” which is tagged as a DVD-Screener, has a large Warner Bros. watermark but is otherwise intact.
In 2007, a PDF of the book was leaked the week before the title was set for release.
The question now remains as to why the screener is only 36 minutes long, but the consensus is that Warner Bros. was so scared of a leak that they cut down the amount shown in the screeners they sent out.
It could also be that Warner just leaked the clip themselves to add to the hype, not that the Harry Potter series, especially this film, needs any more.
Regardless, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 will make over $100 million at the Box Office this weekend.
Result for: box office
The James Cameron epic Avatar has continued to crush the competition at the Box Office and in the record books, becoming the second-highest worldwide release ever, just one month after release.
Globally, the film earned $191.5 million this weekend, for a total of $1.3 billion. The figure surpasses “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” which made slightly over $1.2 billion during its run. Avatar is now only behind Titanic, Cameron’s last epic which collected $1.84 billion at the Box Office in 1998.
In America, Avatar has hit $430 million in sales, good for 7th all-time. Titanic is the leader there as well, at $601 million.
Internationally, the film is a sensation as well, with $906 million in sales. France is the largest market, at $100 million, followed by Germany at $73 million. The film set a Chinese launch week record as well with $40.2 million last week.
The film cost $230 million to produce and had an estimated marketing budget of $130 million.
Avatar will also undoubtedly be the best selling Blu-ray and DVD of all-time when it is released sometime later this year.
Result for: box office
On April 1st, one month before its theatrical release, a workprint version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was leaked online, and saw giant amounts of downloads.
The release, being a “workprint“, had some special effects missing, as well as the occasional view of wires still attached to actors during action scenes.
Despite this leak however, the movie appears to be successful at the box office, making $35 million USD on its opening day on Friday and making a total of $87 million USD for its first weekend. Comparably, the blockbuster Iron Man made the same amount on its first day.
Production companies says the movie cost about $140 million to create, so $87 million is not quite spectacular, but not to shabby either.
