Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 soared into the penthouse of the record books with its final installments as the movie grossed over $168 million in its opening weekend in North America alone, beating The Dark Knight’s gross of $158.4 million 3 years prior.

Part 2’s opening weekend also decimated the franchise’s previous best opening weekend with Part 1’s $125 million, set back in November 2010, and in doing so it accounted for two-thirds of all tickets sold over this past weekend.

Deathly Hallows: Part 2 opened up to both critical and audience acclaim (You can read my review here). It currently holds a 97% consensus on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a score of 87 on metacritic, indicating overwhelmingly positive reviews.
It also broke both the Friday opening record and the midnight screening record, grossing $92.5 million, $43 million out of which were on its midnight screening, as previously posted.

Deathly Hallows: Part 2 would have also grossed over $307 million in international territories in a matter of days, beating previous record set by Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, at $260 million, bringing its total sum since its release to over $475 million, putting it on course to being the first Harry Potter movie to cross the $1 billion threshold.

Analysts are saying the excellent word of mouth the movie is getting, as well as the 3D premium, coupled with it being the final Harry Potter movie are all converging to make it shatter these records. I’m sure Warner Brothers couldn’t be happier.