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David Mumpower: I think that the two film finale will be a fascinating box office study. Will Deathly Hallows Part One play out like the middle film in a trilogy or will sustained momentum from the word of mouth of Half Blood Prince drive its box office even higher? If it's a disappointment (and I cannot rule out this possibility since the first half of the book was heavily criticized for being methodical and depressing), will this be another Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End where the final film's luster is damaged by lingering complaints about its predecessor? I don't believe The Matrix Revolutions is a possibility, but I can't rule out the At World's End scenario. My gut instinct, however, is that the final two Potter films are upwardly mobile. Both of them will be in IMAX from day one, ticket prices in that format will be even higher and there will be more of them across the country, and people will want to see how the story ends. I have to believe that Half Blood Prince is the first of three consecutive $300 million movies for the franchise and it wouldn't shock me if the final film (what's the name going to be for this anyway? Harry Potter and the Battle of Hogwarts?) makes $400 million domestically and becomes the second most successful film ever in terms of worldwide box office.

Tim Briody: I hinted in the Friday Box Office column that at this rate of growth and fanboy rush, the Deathly Hallows films, especially the second one, will seriously threaten and perhaps beat The Dark Knight's opening.

Jason Lee: I agree with Tim, Deathly Hallows Part II will be the biggest film of its summer and will certainly threaten for the biggest opening weekend of all time. The other thing that I want to throw out there is the possibility of the book audience growing substantially before the first Deathly Hallows film comes out. I've heard from no fewer than three people, who have watched all the movies but not read all of the books, that are intending on finishing the book series before seeing Deathly Hallows in theatres. I think the knowledge that the film series is coming to a close will help spur book sales of Deathly Hallows and create an even larger anticipation factor for the last two movies.

David Mumpower: I guess this is probably a topic for another day, but I wonder if Iron Man 2 can take a run at that number for The Dark Knight. The first film's word-of-mouth should spike it the same way we saw with Batman Begins...but it doesn't have a Joker.

Scott Lumley: I think the first film is going to open slightly stronger than the average for Harry Potter, but I really feel part two is going to get a result similar to the Return of the King. It's going to be a must-see film and I think that's going to spike the numbers hard. I don't know if it will be a Dark Knight-sized spike, but it'll be big.

David, I don't have that kind of vibe for Iron Man 2. Now if we were talking about 2012 and the Avengers film, then I'd think we had a serious candidate for a run at the Dark Knight.

David Mumpower: The reason I said Iron Man 2 instead of The Avengers is that the latter film won't be out before the Harry Potter franchise has finished. I'm also less sanguine about its prospects at the moment since it's still largely an unknown. The Hulk has been largely met with cries of mediocrity thus far while Captain America and Thor are wildly speculative propositions at the moment. What is certain is that Iron Man was one of the most successful releases of the decade in combined terms of box office, critical reception and word-of-mouth. Its video market measurements are also off the charts. In terms of that idea that a prior film's quality buys the opening weekend of the next film, it's in that Pirates of The Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl area. If the trailers are good enough, I absolutely believe it can get into that Spider-Man/Batman range.

Reagen Sulewski: Let's not forget that it's a huge asset that pretty much the entire audience for the Potter films already knows the ending. In the case of some of these other film series, there were big letdowns as they got to the end. At World's End was a bloated mess, for example. Here, it's already written and accepted. Now, they could still screw it up, but much more likely is the Lord of the Rings scenario, where it's (mostly) as in the text, people know it and like it and make it the highest grossing of the series.

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