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Reagen Sulewski: What gets me about these figures is that we're talking about film series six films deep and eight years from its beginning, and it's never had anything you could realistically call a dip in popularity. It certainly helps that it's one continuous story, but that's a phenomenal achievement any way you slice it.

Jason Lee: I also think that you have to take into account that the grosses for Order of the Phoenix were somewhat enhanced by the fact that its release came a couple of weeks before the release of the seventh book - everyone on the planet was infected with Potter-mania and it definitely helped the gross of the fifth film. The fact that Half-Blood Prince is ahead of Order of the Phoenix by such a margin is really impressive.

Max Braden: Looking at the history of the movie franchise, the first installment was the only one to gross more than $300 million domestically, at $317 million after a $90 million November opening in 2001. Order of the Phoenix got close with a total of $292 million. Given The Half-Blood Prince's five-day opening, I wouldn't be surprised if it goes on to gross over $300 million. As Reagen noted, to be going this strong so long into the series, having kept your original main cast while they've aged significantly, is a huge achievement that isn't solely due to the strength of the novels.

Sean Collier: Jason's point is valid - this film improved over the previous Potter entry, and Harry was ruling the world then and beginning to wane now. Even if evidence of frontloading is present, that's still a success story. As for legs, keep in mind that there isn't much on the horizon. Potter will certainly repeat next weekend against "competition" like G-Force and The Ugly Truth; after that, Funny People is after a different demographic, and then the ready-made flop of GI Joe. Potter could have a long run at the top.

Does absence make the heart grow fonder?

Kim Hollis: Do you believe the two-year gap between the release of the fifth film along with the seventh and final book and the release of Half-Blood Prince helped or hindered its opening week performance?

Josh Spiegel: More than anything, I think that what truly helped out Half-Blood Prince was the unexpected delay Warner Bros. made to its release. It's hard to say what this movie would have done had it come out when it was originally meant to - last Thanksgiving - but there was much more excitement building up to the summer. Obviously, those threats some people made about not even seeing the movie because of its delay were as empty as empty can be. The two-year delay didn't hurt either, but I'm not sure anything hindered this film's performance.

David Mumpower: I'd been on the fence on this subject for some time now, but what I anecdotally observed in theaters combined with the empirical first week data leads me to believe it helped. When Order of the Phoenix came out just before Deathly Hallows was released in bookstores, the end result was a de facto Harry Potter month. That was two years ago this week. In the interim, die hard disciples of the stories have had no outlet for their enthusiasm. A desire to see how the events of arguably the best book in the series play out onscreen no doubt fanned that enthusiasm, as did the absolutely glowing reviews that trickled in. Overall, I do consider this to be a perfect example of absence making the heart grow fonder. Those $22.2 million of midnight sneaks reflect that people missed Harry Potter.

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