Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which opened Wednesday, is cleaning up at the nation’s theaters. It made $58.4 million domestically its first day, the franchise’s best opening yet, and the second-highest box office take ever for a Wednesday opening (after last month’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which made $62 million).
Overall, its take is the fourth highest opening day ever, also trailing the Friday-opening movies The Dark Knight (at $67.2 million) and Spider-Man 3 (at $59.9 million).
Industry observers say Half-Blood Prince might end up being the highest-grossing Harry Potter movie of all, beating the current record-holder, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the franchise’s first installment.
But the news is less good for several other fantasy-themed projects.
In the Emmy nominations, which were announced today, fantasy programming was mostly ignored. In the major categories, Lost scored a couple of nominations, Kristen Chenoweth was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Pushing Daisies, and Bob Newhart scored a Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Librarian: Curse of the Jades Chalice.
Meanwhile, Pushing Daisies, True Blood, Heroes, Lost, Smallville, Ghost Whisperer, The Librarian, and Sancturary all scored at least one nomination in the technical categories, and Joe LoDuca, who was previously nominated every season for Xena: Warrior Princess, was nominated for Outstanding Music Composition for Legend of the Seeker, that show’s only nod.
Joss Whedon’s online short, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, was nominated for Outstanding Special Class.
But True Blood (and the final season of the sci-fi show Battlestar Galactica) were shut out of the major nominations, despite being considered strong contenders. Likewise, Supernatural was shut out, despite serving up its best season ever.
See the entire list of nominations here.
In more bad fantasy television news, NBC’s The Listener, about a man with psychic ability, has been canceled, with its last episode airing next week. Five unaired episodes remain.
Will NBC also cancel Merlin before its 13-episode run is over? The last The Listener scored a .7 share in the 18-49 demo on a Thursday night, while Merlin, whose ratings continue to sink, scored a .9 in the same demo in its last Sunday night outing.
