Harry Potter movie tickets a near sell-out

Online movie ticket sales made it easier for die-hard Harry Potter fans to secure tickets to the latest midnight premier, helping catapult it to one of the top advance ticket sellers of all time.

Liz Murphy, spokeswoman for movietickets.com, said 96 percent of film tickets sold at Web site Tuesday, July 14, were for midnight screenings of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That puts the film in the top 10 advance on-line sellers of all time with such blockbusters as Star Wars, The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings.

“A lot of these big films are very conducive to on-line ticket sales,” Murphy said. “The die-hard fans really want to guarantee their seats.”

Movietickets.com is the online agent for National Amusements, one of the biggest movie house chains in the Dayton market. Tuesday showings across the Miami Valley were selling out including Beavercreek, Dayton, Huber Heights, West Chester and Kings Island although some theaters still had available seats.

“We’ve had very brisk sales with all the Harry Potter films,” said Tracy King, spokeswoman for National Amusements. “We definitely are expecting a good turn out tonight.”

Some fans are still buying seats the old fashion way. Three showings after midnight at the Cinemark Miami Valley theater in Piqua had sold out just after noon Tuesday and employees there said most of the sales were to walk-in customers.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was originally scheduled for a fall 2008 release, but studio executives delayed the film in hopes of a larger summer movie audience.

The film is the sixth in the series of movies based on the best selling books by author J.K. Rowling.

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