Rejoice Harry Potter fans! The huge blitz for the movie is paying off. In truckloads that is. Not only is the movie absolutely epic (my review) but the response is great as well!

Let’s start domestically in the U.S. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has decimated the midnight box office record, bringing in over $43.5 million from its midnight screenings alone, from 3800 screens. The previous record was held by the Twilight Eclipse movie, which brought in $30 million from 4000 screens. Just to show the magnitude of such an opening, if Harry grossed that much all of Friday, it would still make it the 13th biggest Friday box office opening sum in history.

The movie is headed for a huge U.S. Opening weekend as well with initial forecasts set for it to open with more than $145 million. Most people expect it to go higher and even break The Dark Knight’s record, set in 2008, by grossing more than $158.4 million in its opening weekend, Friday through Sunday.

The Friday total for Harry Potter was $92.1 million in the U.S. alone, dwarfing the previous record set by New Moon at $72 million. Friday’s sum alone puts Harry Potter as the 2nd best opening of 2011, behind Transformers. Though analysts are expecting it to go over $170 million now, to become the highest opening weekend in history.

On the international front, the movie grossed more than $43.6 million from 26 territories. To put it into perspective, that’s 82% better than Part 1 and 46% better than Half-Blood Prince, both of which had huge international opening weekends.

And look at this… the movie set opening day records in every single country it was released in! It grossed more than $7 million in Australia on its first day, beating the previous record set by Return Of The King back in 2003. What was the previous record? Just over $2 million.

The other grosses were as follows: Italy ($4.6 million), Sweden ($2.1 million), Norway ($1.8 million), the Netherlands ($1.7 million), Denmark ($1.6 million), Belgium ($1.4 million) and Finland ($749,000). It also claimed the Wednesday opening record in France ($7.1 million), the preview record in Germany ($5.3 million), and the Warner Bros. opening day record in Russia ($4.1 million).

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is set to break the record set by Half-Blood Prince for biggest opening international weekend as well. And when it’s all said and done, this movie is expected to add more than $1 billion in revenue to the world’s most lucrative movie franchise ever.

I will be posting the final numbers the moment they’re available.