'Harry Potter' takes down Batman with $168.6M weekend

The boy wizard has vanquished the dark knight and a band of pirates with a record-setting magic act at both the domestic and international box office.Warner Bros. estimates that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" took in $168.6 million domestically from Friday to Sunday. That beats the previous best opening weekend of $158.4 million, also held by Warner Bros. for 2008's Batman blockbuster. The Dark Knight.

Overseas, the film added $307 million in 59 countries since it began rolling out Wednesday, topping the previous best international debut of $260.4 million set in May by Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.International results for "Deathly Hallows: Part 2" included record openings in Great Britain at $36.6 million and Australia at $26.7 million, according to Warner Bros.Worldwide, "Deathly Hallows: Part 2" topped $475 million in a matter of days, putting it on course to become the franchise's first billion-dollar worldwide hit.

Overall domestic revenue for the weekend totaled $263 million, a record for a non-holiday weekend, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com.The "Harry Potter" finale also set a record for best opening day domestically Friday with $92.1 million, nearly $20 million ahead of the previous high for "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" two years ago.Other records for "Deathly Hallows: Part 2": best domestic gross for debut midnight shows at $43.5 million, topping the $30 million for last year's "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse"; best domestic opening in huge-screen IMAX theaters with $15.5 million, surpassing the $12.2 million for last year's "Alice in Wonderland"; and best worldwide IMAX debut with $23.5 million, beating the $20.4 million for "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" two weeks ago.

The weekend's other new wide release, Disney's animated family flick "Winnie the Pooh," got swamped by "Harry Potter" mania. A return to the hand-drawn animation style of earlier adaptations of A.A. Milne's beloved storybook characters, "Winnie the Pooh" pulled in just $8 million domestically, finishing at No. 6."Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is the eighth and final film adapted from J.K. Rowling's seven novels about the young wizard's indoctrination into a secret world of sorcery and his epic battles with evil conjurer Voldemort.

"It's just a great way to exit, with the class and style that J.K. Rowling wrote into these stories," Fellman said. "It comes to an end, as all goods thing do. When you have the opportunity to be a part of that, to work on all eight movies over 10 years, to see the kids, meeting them for the first time when they're 10 and 11, and just now going to see Daniel Radcliffe at 22 years old in 'How to Succeed in Business' on Broadway. There's a bittersweet part of it."

Overseas audiences remain eager for it, with 3-D tickets accounting for 61 percent of international income on "Deathly Hallows: Part 2."
Woody Allen hit a milestone as his romance "Midnight in Paris" pulled in $1.9 million to raise its domestic total to $41.8 million, a personal revenue record for the filmmaker. The Sony Pictures Classics release beat Allen's previous high of $40.1 million for 1986's "Hannah and Her Sisters."

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.