It was no record, but "Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 1" conjured up $24 million at 3,700 locations during Thursday's midnight showings.
That falls short of the $30 million benchmark set last June by midnight screenings of "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse." It is also shy of the $26 million banked by "New Moon" during 12:00 am showings.
Eclipse" debuted in more theaters than "Potter," though, with more than 4,000 locations offering late-night showings of the vampire romance.
The bespectacled boy wizard did set one record. "Deathly Hallows" grossed $1.4 million at 238 IMAX outlets. That's $400,000 more than "Eclipse" made on the massive screens.
It was also the highest midnight numbers for any film in the (so-far) seven picture franchise. "Half Blood Prince" — the sixth installment — cast a spell over late night moviegoers to the tune of $22 million in the summer of 2009.
The midnight screenings began selling out quickly, and many theater began offering 3 a.m. screenings to keep up with demand.
The film rolls out this weekend at 4,125 locations in the U.S. and Canada, and studio tracking is predicting a three-day opening gross of at least $130 million.
With midnight's grosses factored in, the first of the two part finale is on track to have the biggest "Potter" opening of all time. It will likely top the $102.7 million brought in by "Goblet of Fire" during its 2005 debut.
"Deathly Hallows" will also benefit from having the box office largely to itself this weekend. Only one other film opens wide — Lionsgate's "The Next Three Days." The Russell Crowe drama is debuting at 2,564 locations and predicted to gross just under $10 million this weekend.
"Potter"s' bullish opening means that "Star Wars" will soon lose its crown as the top-grossing franchise of all time. The six-part space opera has made $1.92 billion so far, while the "Potter" films have earned $1.71 billion thus far.
"Part 2" opens on July 15.