2001: THE YEAR'S BIGGEST FILM `HARRY POTTER' HIGHLY ANTICIPATED WIZARD SAGA CASTS WORLDWIDE SPELL.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'' was easily the most anticipated movie of the fall, riding into the box-office record books on lots of cut-rate kid and matinee tickets, creating a frenzy around games, toys and merchandise and certifying Harry's creator as a billionaire.

The first film based on author J.K. Rowling's best-selling series about an exceptional boy wizard arrived on 8,200 screens across the country with a built-in audience of tens of millions of enthusiastic readers and the rare blessing of the writer.

Well before its opening, ``Harry'' star Daniel Radcliffe graced the covers of TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, and even the frequently highbrow Vanity Fair, which labeled its October edition the ``special Harry Potter collector's issue!''

The Nov. 4 world premiere in London drew worldwide media attention and whipped up American demand for advance tickets and glimpses of the latest trailer on Warner Bros.' official Web site. Early reviews were mostly very positive, although a few complained that director Chris Columbus' mission to strictly adhere to the novel made for a less imaginative movie.

``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'' began playing in some movie houses at 12:01 a.m. Nov. 16, and by the time the last moviegoers trailed out two nights later, it had grossed more than $90 million.

But the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Box-office watchers noted a 59 percent drop from Thanksgiving weekend less than a month into its run, and they wrote that the film was pulling a vanishing act. Never mind that it was No. 1 for the third week in a row, with a take of $23.6 million that weekend and a hefty $6,400-per-theater average.

Only a movie that came out of the gate with the bang of ``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'' could be deemed a failure with that kind of third-weekend return.

Is Harry, the most famous student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, already becoming passe?

``I think with any film with that much hype that was marketed in such a way - with so many theaters that so many people could see it during the first 10 days - the drop-off was inevitable,'' said Jonathan Kuntz, who teaches American film history at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations, agreed.

``I think it's a grand-slam home run,'' he said. ``To expect a film to start out at $90 million and maintain that sort of trajectory is a lot to ask.''

He noted that the high number of child and matinee admissions has made its take that much more impressive.

``To get to $240 million in four weeks - you have to sell a lot of lower-priced tickets to get to that,'' he said.

Since its opening, ``Harry Potter'' was chasing the coattails of ``Shrek,'' DreamWorks' animated summer blockbuster that held on for months in wide release and hit the DVD and video record books with its home versions last month. ``Shrek'' left U.S. theaters early this month with $267.6 million and the No. 13 spot on the chart of all-time box-office leaders. ``Harry'' soon passed it.

In the wake of the Potter franchise's smashing success, ABC is shelling out a reported $140 million for 10 years of broadcast rights to ``The Sorcerer's Stone'' and its first sequel, ``The Chamber of Secrets,'' already being filmed. The deal also covers runs on cable's Disney Channel and ABC Family.

The hottest Harry Potter toys, including a Lego version of Hogwarts and a potion-making set, sold out early from stores and online merchandisers sold out early. Some were gone before Thanksgiving.

Another indication of just how Harry everything is getting: Earlier this month, Bloomsbury publishing announced it will issue the first of Rowling's four novels in Latin and ancient Greek in 2003 - not with the expectation of making much more money, but with the hope of making those dead languages more interesting.

The wizard tale's box-office rivals include New Line's ``The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring,'' another dark yet fanciful adventure based on J.R.R. Tolkien's classic novel that opened Dec. 19.

Although it is easy to draw parallels between the two - mystical good versus evil, fictional lands, appealing nonhuman characters, a quest for an item of immense powers, best-seller origins - experts predicted ``Lord'' will play differently from ``Harry'' at the box office.

``That's going to be more of a challenge to market, I think,'' said Kuntz, noting that Tolkien's three Ring novels were first published in the 1950s and peaked in popularity in the 1960s.

Dergarabedian said the two films will have some overlapping audience, but ``Lord'' will take longer to reach its potential.

``You're going to see older audiences come out for it, and they're not necessarily opening-weekend audiences,'' he said.

Kuntz said repeat business for ``Harry Potter'' is not likely to accumulate as quickly as it did for box-office champ ``Titanic'' in 1998, when teen-age girls returned often to see Leonardo DiCaprio.

``Kids might want to go back to (`Harry Potter') repeatedly, but while teen-agers can do that by themselves, young kids - 8-year-olds - have to persuade their parents, which is a whole other story,'' Kuntz said.

However the two films measure up to each other this winter, Dergarabedian said studio executives will be examining their results as a marketing model for late 2002, when the second Harry Potter movie will open about Nov. 15, with the second ``Lord of the Rings'' film in theaters a few weeks later.

And wizards and hobbits will once again cast their spells on thousands of big screens.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Kids at the Pacific 16 Theaters at the Sherman Oaks Galleria look at a mural for ``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.''

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

(2) Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, with Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as his pals Ron and Hermione, work movie wizardry.