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I think that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 can *approach* the record weekend of The Dark Knight. I'm not sure it's going to happen. I will say this, though: it sure would provide some nice symmetry if the first film kicked off the franchise by getting the opening weekend, then ten years later the finale recaptured that record.

As for the new The Dark Knight Rises trailer, yes, I'm excited about it. I'm not sure I really believe it's going to draw in extra fans, but it's certainly a nice extra benefit.

David Mumpower: When I was visiting a couple of other Prophets in Los Angeles right at the end of the 1990s, they both lavished praise upon the first two books. I had considered them to be for kids and was surprised by the passion demonstrated by adults toward such subject matter. Nothing about the Harry Potter synopsis differentiated it from other teen magic premises in my estimation. When I went home and read the first three books (Prisoner of Azkaban had recently been released), I was stunned by their impeccable quality. What was most impressive is that upon release of Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling demonstrated that she had leveled up as a writer by creating a profound work of fiction. I was frustrated by the Rita Skeeter subplot just as I was aggravated by the elf slavery storyline and, well, most of Order of the Phoenix. Rowling's writing is an impeccable demonstration that even the greatest authors make errors in judgment just as her career trajectory shows that overwhelming talent combined with vision and effort does get rewarded in the end. I consider her to be on the shortlist for greatest living storyteller.

Obviously a huge fan of the series, I have watched each Harry Potter movie on opening weekend. As a webmaster, I also take tremendous satisfaction in the fact that BOP was one of the first North American web sites to feature a review of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone due to the fact that Ash Wakeman, a British writer, saw a sneak of it there and wrote a review for BOP. We are coming up on the tenth anniversary of the web site and it's fair to say that Harry Potter's tenure as a box office behemoth encapsulates that time frame quite well.

With regards to movie subplots, the ones that aggravated me the most in the novels were thankfully dialed way down in the movies. To my complete astonishment Dolores Umbridge makes for a phenomenal movie character when shown in short bursts rather than stretched out over several hundred pages of monotonously one-note behavior. When I re-watch the movies, the only plot that doesn't work well for me is the one involving Hagrid's brother, who isn't well animated and is stereotypical for a dumb giant.

My favorite character is Luna Lovegood, the otherworldly hippy girl whose strange insights into humanity frequently lead to the deepest epiphanies on humanity. She is stubbornly optimistic, remarkably well intended and arguably the best adjusted of all the kids struggling to survive their years at Hogwarts. And from now until the end of time, I will love Luna Lovegood's lion hat that she wears during that Quidditch match.

Finally, will Harry Potter break the opening weekend record? Yes.

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