Harry Potter is back — and so are his loyal fans

Kristianna Wright arrived at 9 a.m. Thursday. Since she had been planning for this night for two months, she had everything ready: T-shirts, games, food and blankets.

Outside the theater, under her makeshift blanket-tent, Kristianna and her friends passed the hours until the party began. For this was Harry Potter night.

By midnight, Kristianna had been joined by 5,000 other Potter fans for the premiere of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" at the Megaplex 17 Jordan Commons theaters.

Of more than half-a-dozen locations in the Salt Lake Valley holding midnight screenings, Megaplex 17 had an incomparable full house. Every seat in every auditorium of the 17-theater Megaplex was sold out — and they were sold out two weeks ago.

That's 5,062 people, some of whom spent the day to secure their place in line.

The theater is hoping to break its own record this weekend with sales for "Azkaban," said Jordan Commons manager Cal Gundersen. In November 2002, the theater raked in more than $200,000 for "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," making it the highest-grossing movie theater in the country for the film's opening weekend.

The first two Harry Potter films are among the top 10 grossing films in the world, with "Chamber of Secrets" earning $88.4 million during its opening weekend and "Sorcerer's Stone" coming in at $90.3 million.

With 101 screenings at Jordan Commons, almost one-third of all the shows in the Salt Lake Valley this weekend, the theater is on its way to another opening-weekend record.

"The books are mind candy," Gundersen said — and so are the movies. Their popularity is similar to other top-grossing films for which Jordan Commons holds midnight screenings, such as "Shrek," "Spider-Man" and the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

"It's like the biggest series of all time," said Jessica Hudson, who arrived at the theater around 4:30 p.m. with her friend Sarah Horton, both decked out as Hogwarts students. Hudson, who has read the Harry Potter books 56 times, is looking forward to the Shrieking Shack, where Sirius Black morphs into his animagus.

Tom Moll, who started waiting in line Thursday morning, is anxious to see how much quidditch the film leaves out.

Dan Shaw, on the other hand, wants to see the enlarged Aunt Marge, Potter's aunt who is blown up like a balloon when Harry loses his temper.

"The sad thing is, we all work here," Shaw said of himself and his friends Cassie Haueter and Briane Childs, as they played cards and ate "Shrek" M&Ms. They couldn't wait to see the movie, and they had an inside track.

And today, along with their fellow Megaplex 17 employees, they have the option of dressing up in costumes to celebrate the movie's opening as they welcome the theater's "guests," as customers are called.

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E-mail: ltaylor@desnews.com