Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is not only racking up big box office numbers in the U.S. as anticipated, but Variety reported that the movie "bowed in Japan on Wednesday with $3.57 million on 840 screens--besting War of the Worlds for the biggest-ever Wednesday opening. This number was particularly impressive since Wednesday is Ladies Day at Japanese theaters, meaning women pay 1,000 yen (US$10.69) for an adult admission, compared with the standard price of $19.24. Women account for the bulk of the Potter aud in Japan."

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When a copy of J.K. Rowling's first novel hit the desk of British film producer David Heyman in 1997, he ignored it, according to Bloomberg, which noted that the man who would soon become a driving force behind the Potter movie series "took notice only after a secretary raised her hand in a staff meeting to praise Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone."

"I said, 'Rubbish title, what's it about?'" Heyman recalled. "She said it was about a boy who goes to wizard school, and I said, 'Wow, that's a great idea.' I took it home that night and read it and fell in love with it. . . . I had no idea at all that it would become the phenomenon that it has become, and that I'd be sitting here 12 years after having first read it, talking about the sixth film."