‘Potter’ enchants fans with $58M opening day

Los Angeles — A long school break has been kind to “Harry Potter.”

After a two-year gap since the last film, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” opened with a whopping $58.2 million domestically in its first day, distributor Warner Bros. said Thursday.

“Half-Blood Prince” also conjured up $45.8 million in 33 other countries where it opened Wednesday, among them Great Britain, France, Germany, Australia and Japan. That gave the film a worldwide total of $104 million.

Domestically, the movie had the best single-day haul yet for the franchise and the fourth-best daily gross ever, behind last year’s “The Dark Knight” at $67.2 million, this summer’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” at $62 million and 2007’s “Spider-Man 3” at $59.8 million.

“Half-Blood Prince” receipts include a record $22.2 million from midnight screenings alone, surpassing the previous high of $18.5 million for “The Dark Knight.”

The sixth installment in the “Harry Potter” series had the second-highest debut ever for a movie opening on Wednesday. It trailed only the “Transformers” sequel opening last month.

McCartney performs on Ed Sullivan Theater

New York — Forty-five years after the Beatles’ American TV debut at the Ed Sullivan Theater, Paul McCartney got back — with a concert on top of the marquee.

McCartney put on an outdoor show atop the theater’s marquee Wednesday for a crowd estimated at between 3,500 to 4,000 people. The performance was shown during the former Beatle’s first appearance on CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman.”

The Beatles made their American television debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9, 1964.

During his appearance with Letterman, McCartney recalled that it was “kind of scary” the first time the Beatles appeared on Sullivan’s show.