The first movie Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, released in early 2000, earned domestic distributors around Rs 2.5 crore (Rs 25 million), while the fourth sequel-Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire-released in 2005 fetched domestic distributors close to Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 million).
The reason industry traders believe the fourth version earned more is because of its release in Hindi and other Indian languages.
The movie will be released in Hindi and English in places like Indore, Rajasthan, Nagpur, Baroda and other places in Gujarat. It will be released primarily in English in Mumbai, Goa, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata. Kota will see only a Hindi release, while in Chennai it is likely to released in English and other languages.
Film experts estimate that the latest sequel Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will fetch domestic distributors over Rs 8 crore (Rs 80 million).
The production house is releasing 250 prints of this much-awaited sequel. This may look small when compared with the 600 prints released for Spiderman 3. But like the latter, the releases are multi-lingual - Hindi (75 prints), Tamil and Telugu (with over 25 prints each) as well as English.
Being a monsoon release and when school holidays have ended, it did not make business sense to release more prints, a Warner Brother executive said.
Nevertheless, the studio is not short on hard-sell. It has tied up with various channels and other media houses to provide saturation coverage. Children's channels Pogo, Cartoon Network and movie channel HBO (all owned by the Turner Group) have crafted special programmes and contests around the movie.
For instance, while HBO will air the making of Harry Potter 5, Pogo has been running a contest in which the winner will get to watch the premier of the film with Rob, the popular anchor on Pogo.
Warner Brothers has also partnered the two leading theatre chains PVR Cinema and Inox to host premiers across their theatres.
There is good news for gaming lovers too. For the first time a Harry Potter video game will be available on Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's latest Play Station 3 at a discounted price of Rs 1,999 against Rs 2,510 for Xbox's premium titles.
For users of Play Station 3 and Play Station 2, the prices are Rs 2,799 and Rs 1,499 respectively. However, the earlier sequel of the mega film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was available on Play Station 2 at Rs 2,499.
